


Guileless Son

by Ketch117



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 'Far Country' is essentially Outremar, Anachronistic behaviour and technology can get you killed, Canon Divergence - Robert's Rebellion Never Happened, Examination of Mordred Pendragon and his role, F/M, King Arthur Mythos Themes, Not Beta Read, Not For Rhaegar Fans, Politics are confusing, R plus L equals J, So can the wrong loyalties, Think the third crusade, Westeros Invaded Essos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-01-18 13:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 119,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12389136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketch117/pseuds/Ketch117
Summary: The longest Summer since the conquest is coming to an end, and already, the days grow shorter, yet winter is the furthest thing from everyones minds. Though seemingly peaceful, beneath the surface the Realm is being torn apart, and none seem willing to save it. War is on everyone's mind - while The King plays a dangerous game in a court in shambles around him, searching for answers in the secrets of the past, lords great and small conspire against him and each other.And yet, the greatest threat to the realm may well come from within the kings own family. For even the most carefully hidden of sins is unlikely to stay buried forever…





	1. Lyanna, Jon

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Mordred's Lullaby' by Heather Dale. Admittedly, knowing that piece of trivia kind of gives the story away.
> 
> Feedback very welcome.

**THE SHE-WOLF**

Lyanna Baratheon looked into her silver mirror for far longer than she had intended when her eyes had strayed to it.

And it was all that she could do not to sigh.

When she'd been younger she would have been horrified at the thought of being so vain as to waste time better put to use in search of adventure, excitement or at least trouble (and yet trouble was what she inevitably found) inspecting herself with an increasingly critical eye. Back then she had a wardrobe full of dresses she did her best to never wear, she'd been halfway wild and all of the way wilful, and the cause of the bulk of her fathers gray hairs.

But when she'd been younger her arse had been tight, her stomach had been as smooth and flat as a board without the fine stretch marks along the sides that had faded but never entirely gone away, and her dark hair had always seemed windswept and fallen down her back to the rise of her buttocks without any grey hairs. Now she was thirty one, and had birthed four children, and each time getting her figure back had been more difficult and ultimately less successful. She was still beautiful, and she was rich enough and she was powerful enough that people would act like she was even if it wasn't strictly speaking true, she knew all that, but somehow it wasn't the same.

Still, she'd held on to the best of it, she decided with satisfaction. She loved her body, and it wasn't letting her down as of yet. She was still more slender lines than curves, though her breasts were full and firm and proud, smaller then was fashionable but the envy of women half her age, and her legs were strong (from use) and long. Her waist was still small, admittedly with the assistance of garmants designed for the purpose, and even though the skin there seemed to hang too loosely particularly around her stomach, and there was no hiding from her hips which were thicker and the meat on them was not going away. Beauty, certainly, but not the beauty of a young girl, of a wild untamable young thing.

 _What do I care?_ she tried to convince herself. But that was the problem, it was easy not to care when you didn't need to. It was easy not to care when it was simply a fact you could take for granted. Suddenly unsatisfied with the view she saw in the mirror, she mentally affirmed that she didn't care as though it were that easy, and turned her attention out over the sea from the headland, and the first blue sky they'd had in weeks. Long arms of black rock, sharp and craggy, extended into the ocean from the coast, in the ominously named Shipbreaker Bay. With the sun shining, it was fair and brilliant, the sky and water glittering and the waves pounding against the shore.

The autumn storms had been unusually violent; night and day the crash of the sea had resounded over the castle, the clouds hung heavy, black and portentous. Robert could sleep through anything, but she was forever being woken up by the rumbling of thunder. Clear days were becoming a rarity, and it was growing cold, far faster than it should be, cold enough that even a daughter of the north was feeling it. Autumn had only arrived what seemed like yesterday, and already the words of the house she was born in seemed apt as ever. She picked up a fur-lined robe, and began to pull it around her than she heard the movement and…

"Not now, I'm dressing!" she told off her husband, as she caught a glimpse of him in the looking glass through the doorway, but he got the neck of her gown in his hand, lifted her effortlessly off her feet and threw her onto the bed, pinned her to it with a strong hand and shrugged out of his own heavy robe a moment later.

"I’m – stop!" she protested, as his weight came atop her, but there was no bite to her objections, his rough insistence had its own charm – and his strong hands had many skills – so when his knee went to part hers, she locked his arm and rolled him over like a wrestler, and sat on his chest, and he grinned at how their roles had reversed so quickly as she guided him into her.

He put his mouth over hers, and she let him, then pulled away, licked the nice salty place on the side of his neck and nibbled at his ear before bitting his shoulder as hard as she could, her teeth drawing blood. His nails bit into her back. She wriggled, clenched her knees on his sides, and moved her head – he leaned forward to fasten his mouth on her left breast and then twisted as he tried to throw her over and get atop her again. She caught an arm and kept him pinned, then bit him again. She was laughing – he was laughing, but he kissed her breast once more before suddenly getting one of his iron-hard arms across her back, ran it down and down, and she moaned -

\- and then he was back atop her, still grinning, his breath hot and wet on her skin, and they moved together rather then against each other, losing themselves in each others arms and thinking only of the waves of sensation and the tense expectation, both challenging the other and neither of them willing to let the other go until they'd taken what they wanted. There was a familiarity about the way they moved together, but there was an urgency about it and excitement too that had never left them. At last she shuddered and went suddenly still, her body trembling beneath him, and he concluded with a groan that he muffled against her shoulder, and they were done.

He was always slow to move off her, when he was done, still kissing her mouth, cheek, the nape of her neck and her shoulder, before he lay back on their bed beside her, panting, looking very pleased with himself, a light sweat forming a sheen over his body as she draped an arm over his chest and curled a leg over his thigh. Her dark hair spilled onto the furs of the bed, and Robert could smell all the scents that made her up, something smokey and rough with a bite at the end of it.

"What'd I do to deserve you?" he asked affectionately, letting out a long, well satisfied sigh. Sex always made him sentimental.

She licked his lips with her small, pointed tongue. "I'm the one who owns you," she replied, then tossed her head proudly. "I rode you like a horse. A big warhorse."

He smacked her naked arse hard enough to draw a cry, then passed a hand over his left shoulder and it came away bloody, and he laughed and shook his head. "Savaged me like a wolf, looks like." He rolled onto his side so that he was looming over her and kissed her again, deeply as he could. "It's breakfast time, and Stannis and Renly intend to get their pound of flesh. I was going to get you rather then suffer through it alone, but then I saw you there with the sunrise in your hair and had a better idea."

"As if you ever think about anything else."

"You bring it out in me, my she-wolf. I can't go an hour without wanting you." he replied, then got to his feet. Sentimental, perhaps, but not so sentimental as to take the time for more than the most cursory of pillow-talk. "You'd better wash. Shall I bring you a jug of water from the yard?"

His head almost brushed the ceiling; he carried himself with brash confidence and stood tall and lean and hard, his chest broad, his shoulders strong, solid muscles front and back, and his calves as good as any young gallants. He was starting to get a little more heavily padded around the midsection, but he'd lose that next time he was away at war, he always did. She looked him over with satisfaction, and felt her desire rise. "I don't think I'm quite ready to need to get clean yet." She said instead, rolling over onto her stomach, resting her chin on her crossed wrists and crossing her legs provocatively. "I think you missed a spot."

Robert stepped back to her and ran a hand up her leg from the bottom and she gave a little kick to encourage him, then they met each others eyes.

"Breakfast can wait." he declared, rolling her back over.

"Sure you aren’t you too old for this sort of thing?" she asked, then gasped again and they were both occupied with more pleasurable pursuits then talking.

 

\+ + + + +

 

An hour later, they were in the smaller of the castle’s Halls. Breakfast had been called twice, but one of the advantages of wealth and privilege is that you know somebody will keep your food hot no matter how late you happen to be. Robert Baratheon sat comfortably in a great black oak chair - which folded up easily for transport or storage, the Baratheons were a military family - with a pair of wolf-hounds at his dangling fingertips. He was tall, broad and obviously physically powerful. He had four years upon her, his famous head of dark hair was beginning to grey, and eyes were a very unlikely shade of blue - a dark blue, like lapis. He wore the black and yellow livery of the Baratheons in satin and leather, and carried the weight of muscle required to fight in heavy harness that made the garments strain a little whenever he turned, or leaned down to scratch his favourite wolfhound.

She wore a heavy gown of grey wool as fine as velvet tipped with spotted ermine furs only those of royal blood were supposed to wear, with fine white stockings that she rather daringly showed through a slit of her gown, and her riding boots, scuffed and in need of a polish, but well broken in and as comfortable as a favorite pair of slippers as a consequence. Their eyes met often, and their hands touched constantly, two people who’d just made love and weren't quite ready to let go.

Robert's two brothers were seated left of the couple, and her husband was doing his best to ignore them both. Immediately to his left was Stannis - sour, grim, not as big as Robert or as strong, though bigger and stronger than most, dressed somberly in black and grey, and looking old, gaunt, worn-out and common. When she'd first met him he'd been twenty and he'd already looked his present age, which was a decade and a half older. He looked like he'd rather be back over the sea in his own keep with his wife, who he famously had trouble getting on with, and their brood of children all of whom were a lot more like her than like him, but he was here, at least in part because it was about to be the season for campaigning and he wanted Robert's army, the way he had every year since they won him his own lands.

Renly looked like Robert, or at least he was more like him than his other brother. But his was a milder copy: not so dark, nor so strong, nor so big, nor so obstinate. Indeed, he was a bit of a fool. He walked with a spring in his step, as though he enjoyed being alive, and he wanted a reputation as a warrior but hadn't any knack for it, never knowing what to do with troops when either of his brothers gave them to him. He had made something of a name for himself as a tourney knight, but though he was a welcome sight at the lists he had never truly excelled there either.

As for Stannis, he had an estate of his own, and titles and responsibilities, leal servants and lands to go with it, and he had for ten years now. Admittedly it was on the other side of the Narrow Sea and sparsely populated, as well as forced onto a perpetual war footing by three variations of hostile neighbors, but it was his, it had been conquered, seized and settled in his name and in House Baratheons like most of the land that had once been Andalos had been settled by concentrated efforts and given to second sons, and if holding it was another matter entirely, then Stannis's joyless soul had so far proven up to the task. Her husband was a man who loved life and reveled in everything he did, but his brother was the inverse, he saw his life as a duty to his people and family, and never saw himself as above the laws that he spent all his time making. It was hard to like Stannis, but harder not to respect him.

As soon as Robert had sat down, Stannis had launched into a description of the troubles facing their new kingdom in what was becoming known as the 'Far Country', in his tense, pedantic way, and Robert made a cursory effort to pay attention, or at least to appear that he was. Having no such obligation to to pretend interest herself, she began setting her plate, having worked up a good appetite. Robert ate the evening meal with all his household and his garrison besides, and the generosity of his table was rightly famed, but breakfast was a more intimate affair in the Small Hall, with only a dozen or so present.

"Pentos intends to offer terms again, at least until winter." Stannis was explaining, despite knowing full well that Robert wasn't interested in the details of the political realities faced by settlers over the sea. "We don't need the reprieve as much as they do, but they've still got the coin to pay for sell-swords, and seem to be willing to reach into their pockets, if that's what it takes."

"A nation of shop-keepers." Renly supplied with a grin, folding his arms.

"Maybe, but with winter coming, most of the settlements and holdfasts have sufficient troubles that any sort of treaty, no matter how shameful the terms, will likely tempt a great many."

"How so?" Robert asked, slathering his freshly baked bread with butter and honey.

"Most of the communities cannot produce what they need to survive on their own, and so represent a constant drain upon their lords coffers. Encouraging trade is coming to be more important then counting swords, and it is proving to be far more of a challenge attracting skilled settlers, and many trades are desperately under-represented. We get a few who are desperate for a new life, but mostly we get mad septons and their god-bothering nonsense, and the poor, the desperate and people running for something."

"That bad?" Robert replied, stifling a yawn, his gaze straying around the room, looking for something else to occupy it's attention. It lingered thoughtfully on one of the kitchenmaids, then settled on Lyanna, who stretched more like a cat than a wolf, showing a fine length of stocking that made her husband growl and lose track of whatever Stannis had been saying to him. Affecting not to notice, she ate her way through a small pile of scones and licked raspberry jam off the spoon with a curl of her tongue before running her eyes over him.

"Stop that! I’m supposed to work today." He laughed, though his wandering attention was now firmly upon her. He hadn't strayed from her bed in years, but keeping Robert Baratheon's interest was a full time job on it's own.

"Work? The Cock of the Stormlands? You never work." She laughed back.

"Some things can't be avoided, like this letter. I'd have it over and done with soonest, if it's all the same to you."

Stannis, uncomfortable with their flirting, was studiously looking away, while Renly was staring at them both with a challenging look, as though daring them to make a spectacle of themselves, not that they ever needed any real help in that regard.

"What letter?"

Robert nodded, and waved over their third son, Edric, who as his father's cupbearer waited below the dais for instructions at mealtimes. He was her favorite son – absolutely obedient, charming, he had the makings of being a fine warrior one day, and he seemed to have picked up manners somewhere, though presumably not from either of his parents. "Go find Cressen and get the letter from the crown, will you?" Robert instructed, and he hastened to obey with the solemnity of a twelve year old.

"It’s time we fostered that callow good-for-nothing," Robert said as their son departed, making it come out as a term of endearment. "He’s too old to wait on our table, he aught to be a squire by now if he ever wants to become a knight. Let’s send him to the Vale." Robert was good with children, but he didn't like having them underfoot for too long either. Lyanna always missed them when they were gone, but she understood the necessity of giving them perspective and a chance to build alliances of their own.

"You always say all Elbert's sons are lechers and catamites," she reminded him sweetly instead, knowing that would sour him to the idea. "And that it's all his wifes fault they turned out that way. Anyway, he's already got his hands full with Steffon." Robert conceded he'd expressed that opinion a number of times, then paused for a moment, considering. Steffon was now fourteen, and had been fostered since he was ten. He was tall and lean and was moody and difficult while also being honest and forthright and loyal to a fault, and secretly a bit of a romantic. Not her favourite son, although the easiest to manipulate, he was a lot like his father.

"Your family then." He offered as compromise. "Whichever branch you should like."

"I'll write to my brothers." She conceded. "Though as I understand they have enough children of their own to deal with."

Robert stroked his jaw. "Tully, maybe? He never does anything for anybody unless he can see what is in it for him, but the boy could do worse."

"And far better, or at least so it seems to me." Lyanna replied, hoping that would shelve the issue, at least for the moment, then changing the subject. "Why would the Crown write to you?"

"The Queen Dowager did." Robert said. "It's casually worded, and she's not asking anything too onerous, just a minor display of support." Renly sighed. In some ways, his older brother was quite brilliant. With politics, it was as if he was wilfully blind.

"Support for her? Not the king? I imagine that might be taken the wrong way." Renly said to his brother, having been left out of the conversation as long as he could stand. "Who else got letters like this, and what exactly does she want?"

"I don't know who she wrote to. And she's not asking for much, just a tournament." Robert replied. "A small one, when spring arrives."

Lyanna's eyes narrowed, but Robert was facing the other way and didn't notice her reaction. Renly smiled, already envisioning it as a chance to show off, though he still looked suspicious. "Why you?"

"Who knows? Still, it's a harmless enough request. I'm of a mind to indulge her, though we'll have to wait and see what winter has to say first."

"There must be cheaper ways of indulging an old widow." Ser Cortnay Penrose grumbled from down the table. He was Storm's End's Castellan, which meant he did most of the work that Robert avoided, which was everything that's importance could not be sufficiently impressed upon Robert for him to take the time to do it. Normally, Ser Penrose did his best to remain aloof to the Baratheons constant squabbling, but he would still speak his mind if he thought it necessary, and Robert was a man to quickly forget the value of money unless someone given to a more practical disposition was around to keep it in mind for him. Ser Penrose was bald as an egg, but favored a fierce reddish-black beard that ended in a flat line, cut wide like the blade of a shovel. "Even if she is a queen. And you're intending on going to war, and wars are expensive."

"Properly fought wars pay for themselves." Robert replied airily, in a way that made Ser Penrose look fit to scream.

"And there is this Royal Progress to be handled."

Robert frowned.

Seeing the conversation begining to turn around to him again, Stannis cleared his throat, not willing to suffer being ignored for another moment, and a looking put-apon Robert motioned at him to continue. "The magisters want all the Golden Fields returned to them in exchange for them agreeing to accept our claim to the lands we've conquered, or so they say." He said in a huff. "A look at the maps will make a man skeptical how much of what they now claim they actually controlled before we arrived, but they refuse to be budged upon it. However, they've been particularly proactive. They have even managed to put together enough gold to hire the Golden Company, or that's the rumor. And a Dothraki Khalasar more than ten thousand strong is pressing at the borders. It hasn't crossed them yet, but it's only a matter of time."

Robert raised an eyebrow, suddenly entirely focused on the conversation. "And what does the Golden Company buy you these days?"

"Ten thousand men, or thereabouts. Maybe five hundred knights, as many squires, and two thousand men-at-arms, although with a few exceptions what they call men-at-arms are glorified heavy infantry, not horsed. As for the knights, they have adapted. They ride lighter horses and wear coats of mail rather than full-plate. Heavy pike, and lots of archers. And elephants as well, I understand."

Robert grinned. "So they’re working to a model, what - four hundred years out of date? More?"

Stannis leaned in. "In some respects, but they are also much better disciplined than most of your knights, let alone levies, and their cavalry are much more capable of manoeuvre as well."

"I'm sure they are." Robert replied, still grinning at the thought. "And ten thousand Dothraki, or more, roaming the borders waiting for you and the Pentoshi to batter one another, and then falling in on the survivors." He stroked his chin. "They ride into battle scarcely dressed, much less armored, and those curved blades of theirs are sharp and heavy, but they won't do much against plate-armor. Getting a shieldwall to hold against them would take good men, but if it could be done, with cavalry on the flanks to keep them from just riding around it, then they'd do no good there either. And they'd be helpless against a shaft." He smashed his fist into his palm. "They'd be easy meat for a pitched battle, but they're too canny to get pulled into one, they'll just roam around the countryside hitting soft targets, burning crops and villages and never letting you get within a days ride of them. Each has at least one horse?"

"Most have plenty more."

"And a couple of goats and sheep to live off, for milk and meat." Robert grunted. "But they have to keep moving. They stop for more then a few days and they'll run out of supplies and be eating each other inside of a week. They can't travel faster then their herds or their wagons, which means without open space they're a lot slower. What you need to do is lure them somewhere and trap them with their backs to something. A river would be best, or maybe a mountain or a walled city. Then encircle them, put up palisade, and watch them batter themselves to death trying to break out."

"And how would you lure them into this trap? Let me remind you that for all the land that is marked as belonging to me, most of it is empty. I can pull together maybe six hundred knights, and only one in three will be up to any sort of standard worth the name. The rest will be settlers and peasants."

"Be at ease, I mean to give you what assistance I can, same as I do every year." Robert told him, already planning to be far from home when the king visited the way he always did without fail, then got to his feet. "Well, I have a queen to reply to, I have a distant relative to ask a favor of, and all a number of subordinates I need to reassure. I'll be in my solar until afternoon, then I'm supposed to sit in judgement and dispense justice, settle quarrels and hear petitions. After they let me leave, I plan to go out into the yard and find something to hit. I'll see you all at the feast tonight, " It was a harvest festival, celebrating the first crop of autumn. She hoped that there would be another harvest. She was a Stark, and she knew as well as anyone else just how bad Winter could get.

The Stormlands lacked the vast resource base of The Reach or The Westerlands; it had sheep, and cattle, and timber and barley, and everything else, as they were known to joke, was wind and rain. She had heard it enough to laugh along with them, though compared to the North it was a land of plenty, so perhaps it was a matter of perspective. There certainly wasn't need to send out the old and sick to die in the cold so as not to be a burden on their family, the way her mother had talked about sometimes, and her nurse, Old Nan. Indeed, the climate, with it’s abundant rain and lush pastureland was ideal for horses, and for all agriculture except wine.

Of course, the Stormlands weren't quiet or peaceful either. They always seemed to be picking fights or borrowing trouble, and periodically some lord or another would refuse to pay their taxes or meet their obligations on some obscure point of principle, more for the sake of being quarrelsome than any expectation it would succeed, and Robert would ride off for a fortnight and have a grand time knocking some sense into them. But the harvest was in, and even if there weren't to be any more the granaries and larders were full to bursting, and after the feast it would be campaign season, and that was always the time that Robert was the most active, the most alive.

"I'm going riding." Lyanna announced. She suddenly felt a need for the open sky, for a horse underneath her and her own company. It was a good time of year to bag a woodcock, so she thought she might indulge herself hawking.

"Take Rusher." Robert advised as she got to her feet, referring to the big russet Dorneish sand steed he'd gotten her for her last nameday. Rusher had been expensive, but Robert had been as proud of the beast as she was, particularly since he wasn't a gelding. He’d already covered near a hundred mares in their stables, and likely before winter the foals would drop, and they’d see how the bloodlines interacted. "He gets feisty if you don't let him run as much as you can."

 

\+ + + + +

 

It was an hour past lunch time, and Jon stood in the main yard at Storm's End, watching his father teaching his littlest brother a thing or two about sword work. Robert had taken a personal interest in his children's development as fighting men, and as soon as Storm End's Master-At-Arms Ser Gawen Wylde had pronounced them to be 'serviceable', Robert had taken it upon himself to further their learning on top of the master-at-arms instructions now that they had learned their footwork, body dynamics and balance for themselves.

Ser Gawen Wylde was an old man, and had never been an attractive one, but, with age, he was nobler than before. The lines of ugliness had sunk to rest as lines of strength. Like a bulldog, he had a squat, pinched, jowly face that was reassuring and that people found that they could trust. And if he resented Robert not trusting him to do his job, then he never had said as much, or gave any sign to indicate it. He nodded to Jon, and indicated the rack of tourney swords, and Jon nodded back, but was watching his father put his brother through his paces.

Robert cuffed Edric as he over-reached in a stroke. "Guard, boy! Where is your guard?" He roared at him, and Edric lowered his eyes a little, then lifted them with renewed determination. All four of Roberts sons were faster than him, though he was not slow, and all four of them were stronger every day (though none were yet as strong as their father), but none of them could compete with Robert's experience. Robert was one of the most feared warriors of his generation, a man who'd commanded men to victory and to defeat, who had suffered wounds grievous and recovered to suffer more, who knew more about fighting then all four of them together. A month or so ago, when Steffon had come home from The North, and Durran had returned from The Westerlands, he'd even once or twice taken the four of them on at once, a practical demonstrate how a full steel harness could protect a man in a melee, using the armor like a shield to deflect and turn their blades, never taking a blow flat to the surface. He'd made a game of it, but the lessons had been deadly earnest.

Still, he was no longer young, and Jon could hear him panting as he blocked and struck against Edric's shield. He must have been pushing himself particularly hard, despite his size and girth he had excellent wind, and could usually fight long after his squires began to grow pale and raise their hands in token of submission.

Robert fought with a hammer that he held with both hands, it's head wrapped in strips of leather to soften the blows but still heavy enough to break bone with a direct impact. It had the same weight and heft as the four feet of weighted steel he carried into battle, and it looked clumsy, though in Robert's hands it seemed to come alive, moving in complicated patterns as if it weighed nothing at all.

Jon watched as Robert made Edric defend stroke after stroke until his brothers blade fell from nerveless fingers, numb from repeated impacts.

"What'd you do wrong, lad?" Robert asked him, leaning on the weapon. The two were wearing thickly padded tunics and leggings under light armor segments for practice. As Edric massaged his numb fingers, Robert pulled off his helmet and revealed a bright red face, streaming with sweat.

"Let myself fight a grown man." He muttered, but Robert only laughed.

"I killed my first grown man at your age." Robert replied. "True enough that he was a half-starved moon-mad Mountain tribesman, and I had Ned to back me up, but that's how it happened. Life doesn't wait for you to be ready. No, you didn't keep your guard up."

"I did."

"You know you didn't, lad, and so do I, so there isn't much use lying about it is there?"

Edric looked at his feet. "I know what I'm supposed to do, but you hit too hard."

"I do. And you have a lot of growing still to do before you're as strong as me. But there is no better way to build up your sword arm then by using the blade." He told his son, the way he'd once told Jon when he'd been about Edric's age. "It should feel light to you, as speed comes from strength, and isn't much use without it. In some battles, the winning edge will come if you can break the two-handed grip at a crucial moment. Jon, step up for me and show your brother."

Jon was fresh while Robert had been battering away for more than an hour, and was good with a sword and he knew it, so he didn't hesitate to take his position, holding his blade upright while he waited for his father to get his helmet back on. It was a heavy thing itself, iron lined with thick horsehair padding. The wearer had to breathe through a perforated grille, while his field of sight was reduced to a narrow strip trimmed in polished brass. Already overheated, Robert eyed the sweat-stained lining with distaste, then placed it carefully on the stones behind him. Jon hesitated, concerned at the risk and wary of an accident, but only a little. His father seemed reckless, but he knew his work.

"Turn your right foot a fraction more." Robert told Jon. "You have to be in balance at every step, with your feet planted solidly." Jon shook his head, but he humored his father. "That's it. Right foot to lunge. Ready?"

"Are you?"

Robert laughed, and Jon threw himself at him. Holding the training sword with both hands in his preferred style, an approach favored by Stormlanders who preferred to forgo a shield, Jon delivered three fast killing strokes to Robert's unprotected head and body, only to have the first two knocked aside and the third find empty air where the big man should have been, Robert having swayed out of the way, and then found himself ducking a blow that would have rattled him badly if he been a hair slower.

His blade clanged twice more, both of them always moving, feet never still. "There! Hold!" Robert barked suddenly, and Jon froze at the order, remaining in place.

His sword had arced around at head height, and Robert had caught it with his hammers haft. And, Jon realized with dismay, he was exposed across his chest.

"See that, Edric? Jon's open. If I have the strength to take his blow with one hand, which I do, I can take my left hand off my weapon and strike him with it. A punch will do." He demonstrated by touching his heavy glove to Jon's helmet. "That'll ring him like a bell, eh? Better still is a dagger, held in your fist with the blade between your knuckles. That'll punch through his gorget, if you hit him hard enough." He chuckled at that. To Jon's growing discomfort, his father showed Edric another blow to the exposed throat. "Or even the slit of his helmet, though that's hard to judge and to hit when he's moving. It all comes back to the strength of your arm - and you must beware of him doing the same to you."

Robert disengaged, then stepped back and lowered his hammer. "Got that?"

Edric nodded. "I got it."

"Good. Now, watch carefully. I'll show you some defenses against those strikes. Ready Jon?"

Jon stepped back and nodded. He practiced with his father all the time, and generally his father took the honors, but that was alright. Jon knew that he was improving, and at sixteen had great speed, even if he lacked the strength built by decades of both practice and the real thing. And the more he learned, the more there was to learn, or so it seemed to him.

"My Lord!" Maester Cressen was hurrying across the yard in a low-bent shuffle with as much haste as he was capable, robes flapping about him. Cressen was not far from his eightieth nameday now, and his legs were frail and unsteady. Nearly two years ago, he had fallen on one of the winding staircases and had shattered a hip, and would likely never recover entirely. His days of running were long behind him, but out of either pride or his somewhat excitable nature he'd never delegate this sort of matter to a page as would be sensible.

He was also very learned and wise despite a few forgivable eccentricities, and had taught Robert's children as he had once taught Robert and his brothers, and Robert's father as well, Lord Steffon. His mind was certainly still sharp enough, and he gave prudent and considered advice that Jon suspected his father would be entirely lost without, and Robert seemed to agree because he let him have his way most of the time. The Lord of Storm's End rarely had much interest in the minutiae himself.

He looked his age, his flesh spotted and wrinkled, his hair mostly gone on his pate save for a pair of whispy tufts that stood up like mouse ears, and his long and bushy side-whiskers that seemed to change the shape of his face.

Robert lowered his hammer. "Can it wait, man?"

"I think not, my lord. I just received this. A letter from your wife's brother."

"Ned!" Robert shouted delightedly, taking it carefully in his clumsily gloved fingers and unfolding it as best he could, then scanning the contents greedily. He grinned a few times, even laughed once or twice, then handed it back to the Maester.

"We were meant to have a feast tonight, were we not?"

"A small one my lord, with a few of your banner-men, then a larger one outside the castle with the smallfolk." Robert smiled a little at the thought. A proper celebration for a harvest-festival, with food, drink and love as the order of the evening, a celebration that would be followed by a time of many marriages, like always. Bonfires would be lit on every hill, and revellers - men and women- would jump the flames for luck and their own fertility, and there would be dancing and foolishness and bad behavior all much to the disapproval of septons that would be forgiven come morning.

"Excellent. Then everybody who needs to know is already here. I'll be in my solar. Send up Beric Dondarrion, Lord Bryce Carron and his bastard brother, Lord Eldon Estermont and Lord Fell…" He paused, considering "They're all here, aren't they?"

"I imagine so, my lord. Estermont and Fell I can at least vouch for."

"Good. Send them and anyone else who looks important enough. As for you, boy, put that down and tell Donal Noye to fix you with a real sword." He grinned. "You're going to need it."

 

\+ + + + +

 

Lyanna returned late in the afternoon. She hadn’t been wrong, the meadows around the castle were windless, with the first orange and yellow leaves drifting silently from some branches at the edge of some fields, and felt quite restored. Tethering Rusher, she turned to find her oldest waiting for her at the stables, tall and serious and garbed in black and gold as always, who informed her that her husband thought that she might want to be present.

He was tall and took after her mostly, cast very much in the mould of her three brothers as young men, entirely northern. Jon was very young, he was just seventeen, and he was not tall, and was capable of the kind of graceless, gawky movement that categorized adolescent boys without their full growth. He could also be very difficult, at least in part because he tended to have his way no matter the protestations others made. He dressed like a knight, and was a passable jouster. At the moment, he wore black - black wool arming coat, black boots, black pants, with a gold knight's belt and a ivory-hilted dagger that went with his black hair as curly as a caracul lamb's, his long and serious face, and his grey eyes. Small flecks in the iris of his eyes burned with a turquoise light, as bright as an owls.

"What does your father want?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "He’s planning a war," he said. "He’s going to take me with him."

"Good.” She approved. “It's time you had one."

She swept past him, forcing him to hurry to keep up, and crossed the yard on the cobbles – some considerable distance, and there was the heavy promise of rain in the air. When she passed the kitchen she smelled new-baked bread, and she paused and breathed in the scent, grinning like a girl. She went into the kitchen, leaving her son to stand in yard embarrassed at her behavior, and stole a new loaf, because when she was tempted, she succumbed, and she left the kitchens to walk up the guard’s stair into the keep, working a bit of wiggle into her hips as she passed the two men on duty, appreciating the attention, as she chewed on a loaf still warm from the ovens, than pushed the doors open.

Robert was in the war room leaning over the table resting his weight on his knuckles, with the more bellicose and aggressive of his more important lords and knights – a dozen of them or so, together representing a not inconsiderable fraction of the armed might of the Stormlands. She knew them all, but in a vague way – much the same way she knew all his horses and hounds by sight, even when she didn’t know their names. Robert loved to make war, and he did it with flair and with verve, with brio and with cunning, but she had long suspected that he did it for his own entertainment and all the talk of goals and strategy he went over beforehand were just so many rationalizations for a boy who wanted to hit things. And indeed there was something almost childish about the gathered men when they were together - if being simple is the same as childishness. Some of them were old, and some of them were young, but they all had a kind of collective enthusiasm and excitement. They all sat together in easy camaraderie, and were served wine without comment by the pages.

All of them, she was fairly sure, had wives of their own tucked away somewhere - but nobody ever saw them, or at least she certainly never had. And you never saw the men themselves separate for long.

Robert looked up at her and smiled broadly, all jovial bonhomie. "Lyanna, my beauty. It would appear we're to pay a visit to your family. We'll leave with the tide tomorrow morning, we have a wedding to attend."

There was nothing reserved about the way she smiled. She still thought often of her home, wistfully. It wasn't that she was out of place, exactly, for Robert was kind to her and readily affectionate, and he always had been. He had soothed her through the early days, he had given her jewels and beautiful things that had meant nothing to her as well as others that had meant the world - a sword of her own he'd arranged for her to learn how to use, horses for riding and hawks for hawking, he'd taken her hunting with him and encouraged her to find her own likes and interests which he hadn't intruded himself upon, he treated her always as his equal, even allowing her to sit in on his councils of war as he was now and let her have a say, and most significantly of all given her time to find her own way to him, at her own rate. "And will these fine gentlemen be accompanying us?"

Robert bared his teeth, in something between a grin and a snarl. "Of course. And many others. It seems the season will not be taking me across the Narrow Sea." He sounded a little frustrated at that, but not overly much. Stannis, by his side, was gritting his teeth, obviously feeling affronted that Robert was putting his wife's family over his own, but unable to voice it without sounding like a hypocrite. She was sure Robert still intended to suport his brother, but Stannis wouldn't see it that way. He never did.

The war - which was called a crusade but resembled an invasion and a land grab - across the sea had begun late in the reign of King Aerys the Terrible, and had seen tremendous initial success and popular support, but every following year the costs had climbed and the returns had fallen away as it dragged on, and on, and though it still continued in a desultory, uncommitted fashion most of the battles were to defend the estates that had been seized in the initial wave of conquest. It had shown great promise when it had been formally declared ten years ago now despite everyone believing it to be hot air and fantasy - afterall, any student of history knew that Westeros might be invaded from Essos, but who had ever managed the reverse?

But Aerys The Terrible had thought ahead. Aerys might have been terrible, he gnawed on furniture and had people who snuck up on him nailed in place, and people he called traitors burned alive, but he was shrewd when he wanted to be, and occasionally genuinely brilliant. His claim on paper to any of Essos was, admittedly, much too weak to be taken seriously even by his most loyal of supporters, but he had managed to get those he needed to commit to his ambition by appealing to the right people. The Faith of the Seven, who were very rigid on many matters and disapproved of slavery even more than they did the Targaryen's incestuous marriages, was the first to throw in their support. They were well aware that Pentos' indentured servitude was a legal pretense and scarcely even that, and furthermore saw the invasion as a holy effort of reclamation of their ancestral lands, where long ago Hugo of the Hill had beheld the Seven Gods and penned the Seven-Pointed Star.

King Aerys had made overtures to Braavos, who were vehemently opposed to slavery and in principle supported any concentrated effort to do away with it, and were willing to deal with him directly to support him after he condemned Pentos, which laid claim to the territories in question. Having recently fought a war against the city themselves, they had left the city with no standing army, an advantage Aerys was more than willing to use. And he had gotten the assistance of the powerful lords by offering them fresh estates, either for them or for their families unlikely to otherwise inherit. But Pentos was far from toothless, and had attempted to stymie this crusade. It had flung open it's coffers, and it had purchased men. It had purchased slave soldiers and sellswords, it had purchased dothraki and alliances with it's neighbors in the form of defense pacts, and it had steadily lost anyway, until Aerys had caught a fever and died and his son had been left with the mess that he seemed quite content to ignore.

And so the wave of colonialism settled uneasily, but by then enough land had been taken and settled by adventurers, second-sons with nothing to inherit and other desperate types that a second wave of migrants followed them. And as before the men and women who stayed, rather then coming to fight and leaving with as much as they could carry was made up of strange and unsatisfied people who were different and wanted other things. This time, however, they were not just adventurers without a homeland and a home.

Merchants for whom the prospect of increased profits were able to overcome the rigid boundaries, static and short-sighted risks. Farmers and ranchers, who wanted to own their own land and were convinced that even the poorest soils could be a fruitful field and you could always raise a type of animal that will thrive in any climate, or, if necessary, breed one. Miners and masons, who were convinced that there was mineral wealth to be found beneath the Andalos or who foresaw opportunities unlikely to appear in Westeros. Peasents and smallfolk looking for fresh chances or fleeing something. Men stirred up by the Seven, Hedge-knights, second and third sons and petty lords looking to carve out a kingdom, and all a number of others.

Forts and camps were, slowly but surely, becoming castles and towns, and Pentos had shot almost every arrow they could draw to forced to try to turn the tide, and now largely were simply trying to slow it. Most years since, Robert had crossed the Narrow Sea and spent campaign season fighting on behalf of this nascent realm which a not inconsiderable percentage belonged entirely to Stannis, and sometimes she would accompany him but more often she would not. Time apart kept desire strong.

"I do hope you don't plan on moping around the place instead. You'll get in the way."

Robert laughed, and sat back and scratched a dog’s head. "No, thank the gods. We'll be staying in the North for a few months. A deserter from the Night's Watch has named himself King beyond the Wall, and appears to be preparing to invade the South. Your brother wrote to the Crown, and wrote to his extended family as well. I just received a year’s worth of news, sweetness. Mance Rayder, whoever he is - is getting reckless. He’s raising armies and playing power with the wildlings, and the Night's Watch are convinced he'll march on the wall by the time Winter arrives. He has more then a hundred thousand fighting men, according their rangers, and all a manner of fantastical things, mammoths and giants, something called thenns, as well as grumpkins and snarks I shouldn't be surprised to hear." He shook his head, but there was no hiding the enthusiasm in his eyes. "Sixteen ships, I should think." Robert continued. "We'll sail up to White Harbor, cross the Wall at the Nightfort and set up a camp there. Then there’ll be a lesson learned."

"War in the North at this time of year? There'll be ice on the lakes in a month."

Robert shrugged. "We'll wear warm pants."

She snorted, but didn't actually laugh. "And whose wedding is it?"

"That's quite a story on it's own." Robert smiled. "From what I hear, a woman of pure Valyrian stock from Volantis was brought to Court, and was expected to marry the King's brother." The king's brother was twenty one, a sharp and mercurial man quick to take offense, who seemed to relish any chance to indulge in his power, and had acquired a certain dark reputation that this behavior had done little to dispel. She was more then content to believe the worst of him on scant evidence. Of course, she had once thought the worst of Robert and he'd surprised her, in most ways, but she couldn't find it in herself to think well of any of the King's family. "The King intends for his brother to rule Pentos, once we've done all the work conquering it for him, and one of the lord's of Volantis, with a name I can't even begin to pronounce - "

"The Triarch Malaquo Maegyr." Cressen supplied.

"That's the one. He offered very good terms and a loan to go with it. He probably intends to annex the city himself once he's got a foot in the door, but the King doesn't want the hassle of expanding his domains so is more than happy to let that happen, particularly if there's gold in it for him." Stannis was grinding his teeth, but didn't comment. He probably agreed with the assessment, and wasn't happy about it. "Her father sent a fleet to escort her, a dozen ships so weighed down with gifts they could barely move, gold and gems and silks, an entire menagerie of exotic animals with names at least as absurd as the Triarchs, and actual dragon eggs. They showed up a month ago or so, having had to fight off every pirate on the Narrow Sea, but all in one piece more or less. Apparently as soon as she disembarked she was ushered straight to the Red Keep, all wrapped in silk and samite and black pearls, with gems on her fingers and ribbons in her hair, and she was locked in the Maidenvault right away. And yet a week later she had all but eloped with Ned's oldest."

Lyanna whistled, but it was Jon who responded, after being quiet for so long she'd almost forgotten he was there. "Robb did that?" He sputtered, genuinely astonished.

Robert laughed. "That he did. Takes after his father, your uncle. Ned might be reserved and dutiful, but he's a driven man, and when he wants something no power on this earth can keep him from it."

"It was quite the talk once, Ned was a second son and Cat was betrothed to his older brother. Back when your father and myself were stealing glances and blushing a lot."

Her husband raised an eyebrow – they’d gone well beyond either of those things in their first fifteen minutes alone together, within hours of their first meeting face to face. They'd already been betrothed then, of course, but even if they hadn't been it wouldn't have made much of a difference to either of them.

"It’s an expression," she said at his expression, and he laughed and shook his head the way she knew he would.

Jon didn't seem to find this any easier to swallow, but Lyanna turned a trifle serious. "How bad is it?"

Robert shook his head, still laughing. "Not as bad as that. It seems that cooler heads have prevailed. Apparently in Volantis women get to make up their own minds however they should like, and their relatives just have to make the best of it. Besides, her father wants the deal to go ahead and won't take her back, and The King doesn't want to pay him back, so Ned sent for them both and they are going back to Winterfell to get married."

Lyanna wondered if the girl - presumably the daughter of a triarch had some sort of proper title but she'd never been much for courtesy and her father, and later her husband, had indulged her in that regard - knew quite what she was getting into. "And the king accepted that?"

"He did, or at least acted as though he did. He made excuses for his brother - who apparently was complicit in the whole thing, then The King said something about the pact of Ice and Fire - some old alliance from the Dance of Dragons promising the Starks a bride of Valyrian Blood, and trusted that prattling knowledge of history would let him squirm out of trouble. But he kept the betrothal gifts for himself."

"Yes." She bared her teeth. "Just like him. And that's all?"

"That's all I've heard, although with such a start as that I doubt they'll be settling down any time soon. Of course, the King's hardly interested in anything that is going on anymore outside his court anymore. According to his miserable excuse for a Hand, he's arrested his queen. Seems he's got every intention of trying her for adultery."

Just for a moment, despite everything, despite all her nurtured hate and all her plans and the desire for revenge she'd carried for so long, in that moment she felt for the Queen. Something not far divorced from kinship with her. Not that it was enough to change anything, not any more, just that now the queen knew, truly knew who she had married, and was now enduring, in a more elaborate way but no less cruel, what the king - then the prince - had once done to a young girl from the north who wanted more than anything to have her own will.

"That weak fool." She said, almost sadly. "Weak, stupid, cruel, and indecisive."

"But a fine enough lance in his youth." Robert said, then his eyes narrowed when hers did as well. "I know you hate him, my fierce she-wolf. That's your right, and your reasons for that are your own. All our lives we've gone hand in hand, and we've kept our own secrets, and I'm content with that. But I do know how you feel about him. We could have him killed, if that's what you want."

The knights and lords all cleared their throats and coughed, looked away and tried to act like they hadn't just overheard their lord casually discuss treason with his wife like he was discussing redecorating one of the rooms in the castle. Stannis in particular looked as though he was sucking on a lemon. Lyanna crossed the room, pulled him away from the table, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him as hard as she could. "Sometimes you remind me why I love you." She told him breathlessly. "But no. Not yet, not today. Do you know what would happen if he were to die now?"

Robert looked like that was the furthest thing from his mind, but he made an effort. "With the paternity of his offspring placed in question? Most likely the crown would pass to his brother…" The men had only grown more uncomfortable. If anything, their aggressive approach to flirting discomforted them more than their candid discussion of treason.

"And what good would that do anyone? Not now, and not over this." Her grey eyes, however, promised that she would wait a while longer, but only a little. For she was a Baratheon now, but she would always be a daughter of the North. And the North Remembers.


	2. Samwell Tarly

"Get back on your feet." He growled in a voice so gravelly it would be a wonder to hear him make any other sound.

But he did not. He did not think he could, even if he had wanted to. The effort felt beyond him. Felled, dazed, whimpering and sobbing and pleading that he was fallen, pleading for a respite, pleading for mercy. He had been knocked prone on the cobbles of the yard, and battered so that his head was ringing. Now his head was turned sideways, his eyes, bleary and half-focused though they were, were fixed upon the gate, as if in the hope that somebody might arrive to help him somehow, though he was clever enough - or maybe just sufficiently experienced - to know that nobody would. Nobody ever did. Not his sweet mother or gentle sisters. Not any of his fathers men. Or any of his fathers friends either. Nobody. There was nobody to help him.

Blood trickled from a gash in his head, coating his face. That had been his father's first blow, and since then he had been having trouble with his eye - double vision, rather than no vision. That might have been all, except another kick had caught his eyebrow, opening another cut, and when it had landed he'd thought he'd felt something give way in his skull.

"I told you to get back on your feet." Randyll Tarly spat again, still seemingly undecided where to kick him next. Randyll was not a big man, neither tall or broad, but there was something about him which transcended mere physical bulk - a certain fierce and sullen innate vitality that made bigger men cower before him. Samwell lifted his head an inch or two, then his father stamped down on his hand when he didn't move fast enough for The Lord of Horn Hill's liking, then ground the heel of his boot down against the cobbles with Sam's fat fingers beneath it. Samwell made a soft, mewling sound. He wished he could make himself stay quiet, every sound he made only made it harder upon him, but, Seven help him, he could not. His father trotted backward in order to give himself space, set his stance, than aimed another kick.

It knocked the breath out from him, it would have knocked him down if he wasn't already flat, and left Samwell wondering if it's in him to survive, if this time his father will beat him until it was all over, until there was no life left in him. It seemed like it might, after all he had another son now, and Lord Randyll Tarly had already tried everything he could think of to make his heir into something that he wasn't. Eventually even he would find the limits of his dogged perseverance and have to give up. His forehead on the ground, Samwell waited for the next blow to fall. His nose was so swollen and clogged with blood that he could not even make out the familiar scents of the yard, and he had to open his mouth to breathe. Someone was shouting, but he couldn't make out the words. Nothing hurt anymore, or perhaps it was that everything hurt, because he could not separate the pain.

"Get back on your feet!" Randyll Tarly, Lord of Horn Hill had raised his voice now, as though that would motivate him when the beating had failed. Despite the anger in him, Randyll Tarly looked as he always did, iron features giving away nothing but a kind of raw hostility. "Seven damn you boy, get on your feet! Lets see you get up! Get up or it will be worse for you boy!" Punctuating each shout with another kick, his son's whimpering had entirely given way to become sobbing, and rather than lying prone he had curled up into a ball, knees clutched to his chest and face tucked against his knees, still sobbing except when he stopped to take a rattling breath.

"I said - " And then Samwell opened his mouth wide and vomited, heaving his breakfast on the yard, regurgitating every scrap of the food he had consumed earlier. He choked and gagged and spewed until there was nothing but clean liquid to bring up.

His Lord father jumped back with a curse, and somehow found it in him to be more disgusted still. Samwell couldn't move, couldn't or wouldn't even he wasn't sure, and so he lay there, in his own blood and vomit, until his father kicked him again, and with a sudden jolt the world seemed to give way to darkness, and Samwell was gone.

The next thing he knew, it was noon, and someone had dragged him to the corner of the yard and soaked him with a bucket of water, removing the worst of the matted filth and crusted blood. That had been the extent of their assistance, but he was grateful for even that much. He lay there, breathing heavily, feeling unable to move, unable to do more than he was. Everything hurt, his ribs, his hand, his leg and his face.

His sister Talla started to sees him as she crossed the courtyard, hand flying to cover her mouth. Talla was a kind and courteous girl who Randyll found rather less disappointing than his firstborn son, with mousy brown hair, pale eyes and a round face. He tried to call out to her, but all he seemed to be able to manage was a rather piteous moan.

"Oh, Sam." She says softly, drawing a bucket from the well, and a taking a square of fabric from her bodice, and beginning to dab away at his face. "Father again?"

After his last effort to speak, he responded instead by nodding vigorously, blood pouring from his nose every time, dripping, dripping, dripping, over his face and down his chin. She sighed. Lord Randyll Tarly treated his wife like a broken-spirited dog, his vassals like a collection of slow-witted servants and his daughter like the dirt and leaf-mould they had to spend so much time scraping from the soles of his highly-polished hunting boots. But Sam, he was never any species of indifferent to. Instead, he seemed to dwell upon all the ways that Sam did not measure up to his idea of a man, and try to forcibly change him into something that did, by whatever means his surprisingly imaginative mind was capable of devising.

Talla was twelve, and she has found him in worse states than this, almost to the point of finding it routine. She stood over him, dabbing at his black eye, his split lip, his bruised throat. She worked the cloth in small circles around his hairline, her free hand resting on his shoulder. She whispered a few words under her breath that her mother would not be pleased to learn that she knew, and sometimes she almost sobbed, and rubs the back of his neck comfortingly as if it were he who cried, though he wasn't, not anymore.

He wanted to hold her to him, to take comfort from her, to put his arms around her and hold her close, but he didn't want to get blood all down her front, so he lay still instead. It seemed important somehow, although he couldn't say why.

"What set him off?" She asked him. She understood her brother enough to know that he could not be the son Randyll Tarly desired, and knew his efforts to be only served to infuriate their father the more. Yet at the same time, a part of her despaired.

"He wanted to take me hunting." Samwell managed to reply. It was all that he could manage, a short, declarative statement, but what was unsaid could be easily be understood from the beating he'd received. Since Dickon had turned eight, Randyll had been less given to holding back, though it wasn't like him to be so lacking in measure and restraint. He could be cruel, but he only ever hurt his son to a purpose, or at least that's what he seemed to sincerely believe.

"If you just stood up to him…" She started to say, but Sam shook his head splattering fresh blood is all over her hand, and she dips it in the bucket and shakes it around until most of it is off. "It's what he wants, and he won't stop otherwise." She sounded almost pleading.

"No he won't." Sam says, as though he agreed with her, but he knew it wasn't true. Maybe once it had been, but now there would always be some fault, some way in which he didn't measure up that would set Randyll Tarly off. His father could never be satisfied with him.

\+ + + + +

After a kill, whether he was at a hunt, or dispensing justice, or away at a battle, his father was always distracted, sinking into a momentary gloom. It was the moment of the kill that was all to the the Lord of Horn Hill, the moment when he was the power of life and death, and it was then that he came as close to happiness as he was capable. Samwell had had it explained to him from the cradle, listened to the stories of war and of the hunt, and still it meant nothing to him really. But once that moment passed, it was never up to the anticipation. Randyll Tarly kept his trophies dutifully, but Samwell suspected that to his father they were only reminders of his numerous disappointments. The castle was full of magnificent horns and heads and pelts and wings, just as it held standards and swords and suits of exotic armor, but they might just as well be handfuls of dust for all his father cared for them.

But his father seemed to have risen above this habitual malaise now, and was at the head of the table, emptying his third horn of ale, recounting the day's exploits to his wife and younger son, as well as a few of his men and his guests. They had arrived earlier in the day, and Samwell had been kept away from them as much as possible to keep from embarrassing his father. Two old men, and a middle-aged one.

His first impression of the younger of the two old men was of kindness, although Samwell had learned early in his life not to set too much of a store by appearances. He looked around with genuine interest and an obvious benevolence, and looked genuinely taken aback by Sam's injuries - Sam had cleaned himself as best he could, but there was no hiding the swollen nose, black eye or split lip - though of course he didn't say anything.

For the knight understood, the way Samwell did, that his father was not just Master of the castle and lord of the attendant lands and properties. He was the absolute head of this household. His very word was law, his actions were not actionable. Whatever he should choose to do and say within the bounds of his own household, he could do and say with very few exceptions. No law any king had ever passed, before the conquest or after it, stood between Lord Randyll Tarly and his absolute authority over his household, or his family. For Westeros had always structured its laws to ensure that the head of the family would be the one responsible for it. If he felt his son guilty of moral turpitude, or cowardice, or any other kind of social imbecility, Randyll could take whatever action he deemed fit. He could even kill him, or have him killed, and there would be relatively little protest.

The younger of the two old men, Ser Bonifer Hasty, better known as Ser Bonifer the Good, had a strong, bony face that was full of enthusiasm, and a full head of grey hair still dark at the top. His eyes were soft, he had a long nose and a heavy, clean shaven jaw, a large and mobile mouth and a full set of teeth, and was as thin as Lord Tarly, and looked just as strong. His sigil was a white bend cortisend, on a purple field, Sam remembered that from his lessons, but rather then wear that he wore a long monastic mantle; scarlet in color rather then white, and on the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a seven-pointed star of peculiar form. This upper robe concealed what at first view seemed rather inconsistent with its form, a shirt, namely, of linked mail, with sleeves and gloves of the same, curiously plaited and interwoven, flexible to the body as plain fabric would have been. The fore-part of his thighs, where the folds of his mantle permitted them to be seen, were also covered with linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, thin plates of steel ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the defensive armor. Of course, Samwell knew him without needing any formal introduction, for who hadn't heard of him?

He was a mere landed knight in once sense, very much House Tarly's social inferior, but in another, more significant sense he was the Grandmaster of the Order, a knightly order founded on the solemn oath to finish retaking the 'Far Country' in the name of House Targaryen and the Faith of the Seven, with over a thousand knights, the blessings of the High Septon, and considerable lands held in the name of his order - if mostly in the Far Country. He was also a sworn sword of the Queen Dowager, though of course she had her Kingsguard. The two men who accompanied him were fellow members of the Order, Lord Willem Darry (an old man now, but he had been the Master-At-Arms for the King' father in his day, and had trained The King in lance and sword), and Lord Donnel Swann (a marcher Lord from the Stormlands). Dickon and Melvin had both been on the hunt Lord Tarly was describing, but seemed no less interested for that. The Lord of Horn Hill was as enthused as he was capable, explaining every step of the chase, every creak of the bow, every twitch of the quarry. He even held an invisible bow out, smile tight as he demonstrated his sure aim.

The servants were setting the fire in the alcove, and a supper had been laid out. A hunt supper. Meats from the day's chase, fruits from the woods. Samwell would be required to eat his meat raw normally, another of his father's strategies for making him into the man he wanted him to be, but it seemed he would avoid that particular brand of torture tonight. The meal that followed was a misery, with Talla banished to the far end of a long table, wearing a stiff dress that smelled of camphor and cedarwood and was far too precious to stain. Samwell's younger brother Dickon and his father's ward Melvin Peake sat by the Lord's right hand, turning their heads to him like travellers facing a good inn fire, while the two lords and the old knight listened politely but picked at their food. And Sam sat all alone, unregarded and ignored.

Most people had no choice except to arrange their lives around the cycles of the sun, rising at dawn and going to bed once darkness descended, for candles and lamps were expensive, and few could afford the vast numbers of tapers, torches, and rushlights needed to keep night at bay. As Horn Hill did not have that concern, all of House Tarly felt free to follow their own inner clocks, and eat a supper as late as they wanted, even long after dark.

Samwell did his best to stay quiet and not attract his father's attention. Relatively good moods were more dangerous than bad ones in their own way - it was good moods that inspired fresh ways of trying to make a man of his oldest son, or put the idea in his head to bring him along next time.

After Talla had finished swabbing him and he had refused to go see the maester for fear of provoking his father once again (he had ridden out hunting, but he would hear about it - he always did) he'd gotten to his feet, changed his clothes, and retreated to his room, where he'd sat in silence and stillness. And then, he'd began carefully probing his face and body. His trodden on fingers were sore, throbbed, and would not close all the way. His ribs were bruised, the skin on his scalp was broken and still bleeding, his eye and lip were badly swollen and a tooth felt loose in his mouth.

"If I had any courage, don't you think I would have found it by now?" he'd asked the phantom listeners in walls and ceiling and the ghosts that inhabited his room. "What can I do when there is no courage in me, Father? Where does courage come from? Why did I not receive my share? How can you blame me for something I do not possess?" And he had silently shook, and not known how to stop himself.

Samwell reached across the table, and carved himself a slice from a haunch of venison.

”Fine meat. The finer for its freshness." Lord Tarly declared, as though daring anyone to disagree.

Actually, Samwell would have preferred it hung for a day or two, but his father was insistent that what he killed this morning should be consumed this evening, and arguing or disagreeing with his father only served to anger him. The two other Lords must have agreed, for they fiddled with food that obviously didn't please them and merely raised the corners of his lips as they attempted to smile. Ser Bonifer Hasty did eat, but neither complimented or complained.

"To fully appreciate the taste of a meat, you have to kill it for yourself," Randyll Tarly explained to Dickon, who was seated next to him in the place of privilege that aught to go to his heir, his firstborn, and listening to his father with rapt attention. ”It is the way of the forest, the path of tooth and nail."

"The Seven Pointed Star informs that all men should praise the one who is seven for the bounty of the fields and for the hunt."

Lord Tarly heard him, but didn't respond. Then again, Lord Tarly was hardly a pious man. As a child, Samwell had practiced a sort of earnest unformed faith, attending the sept on holy days and lighting a candle to the relevant aspect of divinity every so often and memorizing parts of the Seven-Pointed Star, but he had never contemplated it much beyond that.

Samwell chewed the tender meat, and cut himself some bread. A dark servant girl with distracted eyes brought a jug of spiced wine, which he preferred to ale, and which was another thing his father firmly disproved of. His legs and back ached from his beating at his fathers hands, and his face and fingers twinged warningly with pain every time he moved and when he didn't as well, but he was hungrier than he“d thought, and he felt better than he had.

Nobody else was talking, so his father filled the silence with stories and reminiscences, a stream of inane chatter that his guests listened to, and made Samwell embarrassed for him, not that he'd ever dare tell him that. He knew better than to speak, or to draw any attention to himself unless one of them addressed him. So he sat in silence as the ale flowed and the guests alternately favoured his father with an occasional smile, inclination of the head, or vague and non-definitive agreement.

His mother looked at him with sympathy and sipped her cider, hoping that her husband and younger son would become aware of her disapproval and perhaps even abashed, but his father never glanced at her. Lady Melessa Tarly had always done what little she could. She was warm where his father was cold, understanding where his father was indifferent, encouraging where his father was demanding. But there was only so far she could protect him. He wanted to excuse himself. He knew that there would be no serious talk during the dinner. But he didn't dare leave until he was dismissed.

Finishing the meat, he applied himself to some cut fruit on a bed of ice. The slender pieces were half-frozen and delicious and he felt he could have eaten them by the handful. Everybody else helped themselves save Lord Tarly, who helped himself to another portion of the red, bloody meat. His father hadn't glanced at him once through the entire meal. He was ashamed, Sam realized with a start. Not of beating his son into unconsciousness, just in finding yet another way to fail at making Sam into the man Randyll felt he aught to be.

Lord Darry mentioned the Queen Dowager, and everyone raised their glasses in toast to her. The guests looked satisfied about that, as though they had just won some victory.

At last the ordeal came to an end, and Samwell left the hall as quickly as he could to find Talla waiting for him, an impish gleam in her eyes.

"Will you come up the backstairs with me to listen at the balcony?" She asked in a rush.

"That might not be such a good idea. If I get caught…" He said, hating himself for the way her face fell at his reply. His sense of caution and self-preservation - which his father would call persistent cowardice, fought with his curiosity at what was to be discussed and his attachment to his sister, and somehow it lost, and he sighed, hung his head and nodded.

Talla didn't waste time, taking off up two flights of wooden stairs up to the south while he followed more slowly and cautiously. The ancient floorboards were bowed and twisted up in the corridor that led to the library, and they creaked under his heavy tread, while Talla always seemed to know where to put her feet.

They made their way through a stone room on the second floor which made him shiver with how bare and cold it was, and how dark. Some great houses had libraries on the ground floor, but his father had never cared for books and kept them out of the way, and certainly didn't waste light keeping it lit. Unlike his son, who'd read most of the books in the castle, Lord Randyll Tarly could scarcely read at all without moving his lips and trailing his finger along the page.

The shelves were thick with dust as Talla passed, and she idly drew a face with her finger while she waited for him to catch up.

"Are you sure about…"

"Yes, I'm sure. Careful now. I don't want to miss anything." With that, she peered down through the upright wooden balusters on to the scene below, and Samwell moved to join her, having caught the same illicit excitement somewhere along the line.

Lord Tarly and his guests had retired to Horn Hill's sitting room in order to have a private conversation without fear of eavesdroppers. It was Lord Randyll Tarly's custom to bring honored - or respected - guests in there to enjoy the great fire and his selection of his better wines, and it was in many ways the heart and center of the family estate, its tapestries and oak furniture the best they owned, though most of the time it was left empty.

Randyll sat in a huge padded chair drawn close to the flames, fussing with cups and bottles before taking one of the pokers from the fireplace and plunging it into a goblet of wine, filling the room with the smell cloves and cinnamon, and handed it to Lord Darry, who took it with bad grace and grumbled that they ought to plug the keyhole with candle wax to thwart any spies. Talla giggled at that, clutching her mouth to smother it, but their father and his guests were oblivious. The fire huffed and crackled, and the old keep always moved and shifted in the night.

Taking a second wine cup Lord Tarly held out for him, Lord Swann raised an eyebrow.

Ser Bonnifer Hasty stretched long legs toward its welcome warmth - for autumn was cooler than it should have been - and Lord Tarly regarded the three men enigmatically. He was personally acquainted with both the lords, though he was neither strongly allied nor strongly sympathetic to either, excepting the natural solidarity of the Bordermarches. Their pressing upon his hospitality had been a surprise. As for the knight, he had no thoughts to the matter. “Is your news as incendiary as that?”

"Let us just say it is news that the right people would pay dearly to have, news better kept from them for as long as possible.” Lord Swann replied. The younger man was pacing, rather than be seated the way everyone else was, and mostly out of their field of vision. Samwell shivered as he sat there with his legs curled up to one side, ready to dart away from the light if his father looked up. Talla, on the other hand, was rapt, eyes abright.

“And might I hope that you do intend to share it with me… eventually?” Lord Tarly asked, his voice a deep growl.

"Of course. You're a reliable man, Tarly. Sound. You have a name that can be respected, that means something." Lord Darry replied, the more forthright of the two lords, sipping his hot wine and breathing in the steam. "Still, we're not here for much more than to sound you out."

Lord Tarly was as unmoved by the flattery as he appeared to be, and simply raised an eyebrow of his own. "At The Queen Dowager's request." Lord Swann elaborated. "She plans on spending early autumn touring the Reach. She's already traveling to Old Town, should arrive tomorrow if the weather holds, and from there she intends to call upon a few highly placed - and highly trusted - friends and allies."

"It is most unlike Rhaella Targaryen to leave court. She might well be the only thing that holds it together."

"A mark of the times we live in, when a queen, even a former one, can find herself unsure of the loyalty of her subjects, and need to send men to make certain of their support." Lord Darry said, and drained his cup. He made a face as he reached the dregs and wiped a purple line from his lips with his sleeve. He gestured idly, lost in thought as Samwell's father refilled the cup and brought another poker out of the rack in the fire, which he waved away.

"And should it be expected that men support to the Queen Dowager? Not the Iron Throne?"

"The Iron Throne is more than whoever happens to be sitting upon it, Lord Tarly. It is no secret that many suspect that The King has made a number of decisions she views as unsound." Ser Bonnifer Hasty replied. And she wasn't the only one, Samwell knew, The King's prudence and his political judgments were frequently called into question throughout the Reach, although not in such a way that word was likely to get to him - it was understood that a political opinion and a public one were very different things.

But it was understood that since Tywin Lannister had retired from his position as Hand after the death of the previous King that there had been nobody save the Queen Dowager to reign him in.

The King had almost emptied the treasury rebuilding Summerhall as a vast, impossibly luxurious palace, where he had moved the court and his friends, but left most of the machinery of State behind in the Red Keep. King Rhaegar, it was understood, was a man more interested in his conception of what the world should be, then of actually making it so. He wanted to make the sad happy, but he was impatient with the commonplace. He had a vision of a world that did not hold cripples or bores, poverty or sorrow or ugly things, and wanted to make that world real by banishing away such inconveniences. And Summerhall was the place he had done it.

Of more immediate concern, he'd withdrawn support for the eighth Kingdom (the ninth if you counted the Riverlands) of Far Country, first by no longer sending men and forcing those who had seized estates to be entirely responsible for the upkeep of their lands while increasing the tax upon them, then marginalizing their most important ally the exiled prince of Pentos in his court. He had stripped the High Septon of the seventh seat on the Small Council that his father had granted him, and he had allowed his royal authority to be steadily eroded by defering decisions and judgements, or by outright ignoring them.

"The Queen simply hopes that she can convince him otherwise, with the backing of the right men." Darry concluded.

Lord Tarly grunted, not looking convinced, but not looking unenthused by the prospect either.

Far above their heads, Samwell almost yelped when he heard the creak on the staircase, and Lord Randyll Tarly glanced up. Samwell drew his head back quickly, and met Talla's wide eyes. In silent accord, they crept back from the balcony, back from the den, with Samwell wincing as the boards complained under them. Away from the balcony, the two siblings stood up in the gloom. "What does all that mean?"

Samwell sighed. There was only one reason that they might call upon his father, and it certainly wasn't his qualities as a statesman. "It means, whatever they say, that they don't expect a peaceful resolution."


	3. Stannis, Lancel

Once it was called the Old Castle, for it was very ancient even when the Pale Men out of the East and their dragons had come to Pentos and subjugated it. And not even they, they who rebuilt that crumbling pile of oily black stone with fused granite and dragonfire had known what hands reared that massive bastion among the frowning foothills of the Velvet Hills. Now, men called it Lionsgate, same as they called the huddle of buildings in it's shadow that had become a sprawling, stinking settlement still little more than an army camp that had swollen to grotesque size verging somewhere on the border between being called a town and a city. Aside from the great keep, Lionsgate had few permanent buildings, it was dirty, unplanned, impermanent, yet very well fortified and set in a fertile plain of olive groves and date palms. Stannis Baratheon could at least appreciate the high walls, the number of public baths, even the orchards of exotic fruit that he’d never taken the opportunity of tasting: limes, pomegranates, and melons. But it was the high walls that gave him comfort, even if he had most definitely not expected to see them.

High Walls were expensive, and men do not pay so much in preperation for wars that they do not intend to fight. He wondered when he had become so cynical. It had changed him, this land on the other side of the Narrow Sea. Stannis had seen enough of the east to have perspective about the lands of his ancestors, and he felt keenly he was not the same man he had once been, who had dreamed of being a great knight. The world was larger than he could have ever dreamed of, filled with more horrors and wonders than a man could witness in a single lifetime.

The Keep Lionsgate rose on a mile long crag-and-tail mount behind the settlement, a brooding sentinel watching over the muddy streets below. It made for a daunting silhouette, far grander in scale than anything else the Lords of Far Country had to call home. Not as vast as many of the ancient keeps back home, its metamorphosis into the fortress of a Westerosi Lord had abated none of the Eastern menace of its appearance. The walls had been strengthened and a barbican built in place of the usual wide gates, yet there was no mistaking it's origins, which even the Valyrians had failed to eradicate.

It was still more of a surprise to find that despite it's foreboding appearance, in it's halls all was music, laughter, luxury and pleasure. A red marble staircase led to the first floor, beyond which Stannis was ushered and divested of his clothing before he could object, and then directed to an inner chamber of silk and crimson hangings, of white tiles and gold and teak-wood, where Tygett Lannister lolled on a divan in his steam bath, clad in naught but a towel and his baldric.

At his side was his squire, his brother Kevan's son, Lancel Lannister, who like most of his family was handsome, with green eyes and sandy hair. He was dressed in red silk, and was doing his best to smirk.

Just beside them, beyond a graceful screen of wrought brass, huge cauldrons were set over charcoal fires in a blue-and-white tiled niche. Enormous clouds of scented, overmoist steam poured from them to make all the air humid and sickly sweet. Through the billowing mist, the view through the glass window was spoiled, but Stannis didn't mind. How different could an endless cluster of rooftops, towers and spires look? Four large porcelain jugs filled with cold water were lined up beside the screen, a fifth jug stood empty.

Lord Tygett Lannister was tall and broad of shoulder, and his long arms and wide shoulders had gained him a reputation as a deadly broadsword man, but just now he looked little of the fighter. None of them were the men they had been, of course, Tygett's days as a young man were far behind him. His hair, which had once fallen to his shoulders in golden waves, now hung limp and dank and was more grey. His face was a ruin of what it had once been, ravaged by the years and the miles and more battles than he cared to count, scars and lines that were not individually disfiguring, but taken together made a mockery of him. 'The Lion is mangy' went the joke, and any who had known him in his prime would find it hard to dispute it. His only weapon was a gold-chased dagger in a richly brocaded sheath. In one hand, on each finger of which sparkled a great jewel, he held a golden wine goblet. Stannis, wrapped in a towel and nothing else, could not have looked more out of place, or more uncomfortable, if he tried. He at least looked like a soldier, with his jutting chin and wide shoulders. 

The steam was good, at least. Having spent two weeks at sea and another week on the road, soaking in the hot steam felt all the more luxurious. Ruling an estate here he had picked up an eastern appreciation for bathing, and normally Stannis savored the sensation of being clean.

"I understand the Magisters of Pentos have elected another prince." Tygett told his guest, familiarity in place of formality. "How many is that this year?"

"Six."

"Ha. And to think they once called it a bad year if they went through three. If they don't slow down, they'll have no families left to choose a prince from, and nobody to sacrifice. I understand that they won't even elect a man anymore. Now, the prince is determined by way of a lottery!" He chortled.

Pentos, by tradition, selected it's ruler, it's Prince, from forty or so extended families who could trace their line to the founding of the city, each prince chosen by the Magisters, the most wealthy and influential of the merchant class in a city that was built upon trade, and it had always worked well because the magisters were clever, ruthless and actually ran things and paid some attention to possible candidates.

And while the crops ripened, while trade flowed, while the people thrived and the land was fertile, when priests found favorable omens and peace reigned then the Prince thrived as well. But nothing lasted forever, of course, and as Robert's wife had once told him, the only certainty in this life is winter, and so when, as they always did, crops failed and animals were barren, when trade was not so good, and wars went badly, then the clever men who had made the prince sharpened their long knives which were usually put to innocent uses, then dragged him out onto the field and cut his throat, to appease the world and in the hope that the next prince will learn from the mistakes of his predecessor. But of course he seldom did.

Stannis did not find this wry observation amusing. "They won't follow the man they pick, and blame him for it." He replied, folding his arms before he realized it made him look vulnerable, and so puffed out his chest a little as well, deciding it was preferable to look beligerent. He was ill-at-ease. His semi-nakedness made him feel far more vulnerable than he would have leaning over a tabletop in some diplomatic chamber in the heart of the keep, which had undoubtably been Tygett's intention for meeting him this way. "Yet I hear this new prince has managed to hire the Golden Company. Has he deep pockets, or else has Braavos relented on their treaty forbidding Pentos an army? Or are they simply no longer concerned with what Braavos demands of them?" Stannis asked.

"I think the magisters will pay any price that might get rid of us, or make us subordinate to them, no matter how much it hurts them in the short term." Tygett replied, then got to his feet and removed the towel without the slightest service to modesty. He soaped himself, with business-like efficiency, rinsed the lather of acerbic lye off with icy cold water from a jug put aside for just that purpose, and wrapped the wet towel around his waist and stretched until his joints popped, completing the task with a groan of relief.

Stannis followed his example, though he took what action he could to preserve his modesty by standing behind the screens. He looked out at the view as he did so now that he was close enough to consider it, and paying special attention to the layout of this side of the keep and the streets below. He locked certain landmarks in his mind, using them to orientate himself. Knowledge of what could become hostile surroundings was invaluable.

When they took Far Country, this land of hills and rivers and ruins, Tygett Lannister had taken the trading ports and towns that had once flowed their wealth into the city of Pentos. Now ships roamed to Lannisport carrying silks and spices… and settlers and pilgrims, if they had money. And the Westerlands became wealthier than ever.

Tygett summoned a servant - a servant of the sort Robert would certainly notice, Stannis noticed resentfully, a pretty thing of seventeen or so who moved as pleasingly as she looked - and had her dress him. His clothing, flaming with crimson silk and heavy with gold, was a bizarre mingling of extravagant fashions from Westeros, and finery from the East. Stannis dressed himself, his tunic, trousers and hose all black - good, hard wearing clothes, of the sort any man of any station might wear. "There can be no doubt at all. They have ten thousand men from the Golden Company. They have recruited three times that number from Pentos itself, drawing from the masses owning absolutely no property. The prince has made to them the same promises to that King Aerys, in his wisdom, once made to us. That they can have the land they seize." He shook his head. "What to do, what to do, eh?"

"You're well-informed."

"I make an effort to be," Tygett replied. "I use a few men to pass information to me in exchange for a little coin. They keep me up to date."

"It should be obvious."

"Not so obvious to me."

Stannis began to lose his temper. "Once you were a man, Lord Tygett," said Stannis in a hard, clipped tone; "now you've become a self-indulgent debauchee cowering in your bath water. Well, that's your own affair. But if you want to keep your land, you know as well as I that our only chance is to crush them first."

Lancel Lannister made a shocked noise, but Lord Tygett was unbothered. “When did you last see Pentos, Lord Stannis?" Tygett asked rhetorically. Stannis frowned, he had been hoping for more of a reaction, but he didn't interrupt Tygett. "It has high walls and higher towers. It lacked an army once, but it has never lacked for wealth, and this land on which we have settled has always been content to let fighting men wander, rather then find themselves a home. It is not the equal of it's two great neighbors, nor even of Tyrosh, but it will not fall easily.”

"Not easily, no." Stannis replied. "But fall it will."

"If we are ever to have any peace, yes, it must." Tygett agreed. "Eventually. King Aerys planned to set up a ruler that the other cities would recognize, and the people as well, in order to satisfy it's neighbors. But now he sits on the other side of the Narrow Sea, far from his kingdom, waiting on the pleasure of a King with his own battles to fight. The tattered prince is an ornament in the Dragon's Court, a guest kept around against the day he should become useful. So we must find out own way. Has your brother given you men?" Tygett asked at once.

"Some. Two thousand spears. Six hundred knights." Stannis replied. "More will come in a month. And more after that."

"Paltry." Tygett replied dismissively, but Stannis only shrugged. "How about yours?"

"I haven't asked him." Tygett replied with a smile. "It's my land, and my sons. Not his."

"Well, Robert will come himself sometime before winter with the rest of his men, and help himself to my hospitality, the way he always does. If there's any fighting to be done then, Robert will see it over. But I'd rather have more to show for it than that. I have men and you have yours, the time will never be better. We should take the fight to Pentos."

"Pentos' neighbors have been content to see it humbled." Tygett replied. "Still, if it comes to it they will defend their neighbor from outright aggression, if only reflexively. It's walls are eighty feet high, even without men to mount them. No, there is no sense in laying siege to Pentos. There aren't enough men to be found, not if we enlist every farmer, fool and begger with a sword to surround it, and there aren't enough ships in Westeros to blockade it. And if we leave our lands, the Dothraki will sweep through them, with fire and with sword."

Stannis chewed at his lower lip while he listened. "So I shall get no help from you?"

"Well, on one hand it seems to me that you seek to pay me with my own coin. If I add my strength to yours, I risk losses, but it is your lands they must cross to be any trouble to me."

Stannis got to his feet, but Tygett waved him down. "So I say that you should stand with me," Tygett replied, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. Stannis glowered, not finding it amusing. "I don't intend to give all this up. I'll give you men, add some of my gold to yours to hire soldiers. But it will take more then that if Pentos manages to find an army worthy of the name and sends it to our doors. It might be that if we hold them, if we knock them back, then Westeros will have to support us. But we can't count on that."

"Then we'll have to count on ourselves."

"I knew there was a reason I took to drink."

\+ + + + +

The first harvest of Autumn had already been gathered from the fields around Lionsgate, and so Lancel found himself riding all over the Flatlands to collect the tax crops in a party that amounted to some two score, of whom the two who rode foremost were the persons of considerable importance, and the others, Lancel among them, made up their attendants. They visited client lords and self-declared kings, and other men with more outrageous titles still, a few of whom were pentoshi who had been given places in the new regime, and always accompanied by a clerk from Lord Tygett's treasury who tallied the revenue. It was strange to many of the men they collected from, but not so different from what they knew, and money had to come from somewhere to pay for the men-at-arms and the knights who kept the borders secure.

They made what must have been an unusual party. Torbet was obviously an ecclesiastic of high rank - and indeed he had the honor of numbering among the Most Devout. His dress was typical of any septon, but composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted. His mantle and hood were of the best cotton, and fell in ample, and not ungraceful folds, around a handsome, though somewhat corpulent person, reflecting neither the marks of self-denial or contempt of worldly splendor - as the sleeves of this dignitary were lined and turned up with rich furs, his mantle secured at the throat with a golden clasp, and his robes, though proper to his position had been much refined upon and ornamented, and his features were schooled into a natural expression of good-humoured social indulgence. He rode upon a well-fed ambling mule, with a well-ornamented bridle and saddle. In his seat the worthy holy father had nothing of the awkwardness one might expect, indeed he displayed the easy and habitual grace of a well-trained horseman, and rode better than Lancel himself.

The Septon looked not a little ridiculous on so humble a conveyance as a mule, even if the animal in question was well broken to a pleasant and accommodating amble. A lay brother, one of those who followed in the train, led one of the most handsome jennets ever bred in Dorne, a sand steed imported with great trouble and risk, and the saddle and housings of this superb palfrey were covered by a long foot-cloth, which reached nearly to the ground, and on which were richly embroidered seven pointed stars and rainbows and other holy symbols. Another lay brother led a sumpter mule, loaded probably with his superior’s baggage; and two other septons of inferior station rode together in the rear, laughing and conversing with each other, without taking much notice of the other members of the cavalcade.

The leader of the party was a man past forty, wearing a scarlet cap, faced with fur. He had only one eye, and a scraggly mustache and beard that twitched frequently, and proudly displayed a copper dagger across a black chevron, on a white field. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person. He rode a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war-horse, a great black beast with shaggy fetlocks and flat iron shoes, a horse so large it's nostrils had been slit into flaring holes so that it might breathe more easily, which it was Lancel's job to lead and to look after. The horse, which was named Champion, was fully accoutered for battle unlike it's master, wearing a chamfron with a short spike projecting from the front on it's head. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-axe, richly inlaid with carving; and on the other the a plumed head-piece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword. A second squire, Tion Frey held aloft the lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole bearing a the same device the knight wore upon his breast.

The whole appearance of this retinue was wild and outlandish; the dress of the squires was gorgeous (appropriately, as while Ser Foote was Tygett's Master-at-Arms and had taken on the duties as instructing them as knights, they were both descended from the main branch of the Great House of Lannister), and their lesser attendants wore silver collars round their throats, and bracelets of the same metal upon their swarthy arms and legs. Silk and embroidery distinguished their clothing, and marked the wealth and importance of their master; forming, at the same time, a striking contrast with the martial simplicity of his own attire. They were armed with sabres, having the hilt and baldric inlaid with gold, and matched with curved daggers of yet more costly workmanship. Each of them bore at his saddle-bow a bundle of javelins, about four feet in length and having sharp steel heads, and their steeds were of eastern origin, their fine slender limbs, small fetlocks, thin manes, and easy springy motion forming a marked contrast with the large-jointed, heavy horses of Westeros.

It was strange to think that a war was coming soon. It was also strange to think that Ser Philip Foote, that famous lover of battle, did not take his lances and depart in readiness to join Lord Stannis in the pre-emptive assault he and Lord Tygett had spent the better part of a week preparing as the opening moves in what promised to be a long and hard-fought campaign, but instead stayed behind with the commonplace work of assessing tax. Such work seemed menial, beneath him, but tax, to Ser Foote, was more important than any feat of arms, any glory or conquest. Taxes, as Lancel Lannister - hopefully to be a knight some day soon - was to learn, were the best source of wealth for men who did not want to work, and this tax season, given the growing instability, was Ser Foote opportunity.

Ser Foote had taken Lancel with him at his uncles request, the old one-eyed knight seemingly fond of him, and equally fond of Tion Frey. He had worked at their instruction when there was time. taught them off-color jokes, and discussed the infinite with the Septon. And at hall after castle, at holdfast after fortress, at villages and at mines, at ports and mills and at every other place he reported a bad harvest, and thus levied a low tax payment, all the while lining his own purse with bribes offered in return for making just such a false report. He was quite guileless about it, and made no attempt at all to conceal what he was doing. "It's not like Lord Tygett to let me get away with it." he confided in Lancel one day as they rode towards a town. He spoke fondly of his lord, with real affection. "Lord Tygett is a fly old bastard, normally, and always has a shrewd idea of what he should be getting, but he's got bigger concerns for the nonce to keep an eye on what he's got in his pockets."

"Aren't you worried I'll tell him what you're doing?" Lancel had had to ask.

"You're a smart enough lad to figure out what I'm doing whether I tell you or not. No sense in insulting your intelligence. It's your business what you tell your lord uncle." And that had been all he would say on the subject, though he'd eventually added "thing about Far Country, is that names, titles and blood don't mean as much as they might. Smart man takes his chances when they come to him, to see himself looked after. Here, a man can be anything he sets his sights on."

And Lancel hadn't known what to think about that.

Another day Ser Foote and Septon Torbet had discussed the Faith's endorsement of the war, and Lancel had found himself overhearing every word. "I think you mistake the nature of the Seven Heavens," Torbet was saying, as they took advantage of the hospitality of a town to appropriate for their use of a number of the buildings for the night. Septon Torbet was the most highly placed member of the Faith in Far Country, and was well known as a lover of the chase, of the banquet, and, if fame did him not wrong (and Lancel rather doubted that it did), of other worldly pleasures still more inconsistent with his holy vows. "Do you really think mankind's quarrels and imperfections will be carried on in Heaven, Ser Foote?”

Yet, and it was this that confused Lancel, the septon had a good reputation in spite of that. His free and jovial temper, and the readiness with which he granted forgiveness and absolution from all ordinary delinquencies and some less then ordinary ones had rendered him popular among the nobility and principal gentry, and he had done more to endear the Faith of the Seven to the Pentoshi than any number of screaming fanatics urging repentance. He got on very well indeed with Lord Tygett, to whom he was allied by birth, being related to his sister by marriage (and to Lancel as well, of course). Even the common people, all too frequently the harshest critics of the conduct of their betters, were fond of Septon Torbet in spite of his failings. He was generous; and charity, as The Seven Pointed Star itself proclaimed, can cover over a multitude of sins. The revenues of the pilgrims and the septs, and the land held by the Faith, of which a large part was at his disposal, for all that it gave him the means of supplying his own very considerable expenses, afforded also those largesses which he bestowed among the less fortunate, and with which he frequently relieved the distresses of the oppressed. If Septon Torbet rode hard in the chase, or remained long at the banquet, if Septon Torbet was known to have slipped away after dusk to some rendezvous which he couldn't admit to, and be seen sneaking back shortly before dawn, having redressed himself in haste, by and large people only shrugged their shoulders, and reconciled themselves to his failings by reminding themselves that the same was practiced by many of his brethren who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever to atone for them.

"I confess that I have given it little thought. Though as I have never spoken with anyone who has been in Heaven, nor, I think, have you, I suppose it is all a mystery."

Septon Torbet laughed, "I haven't had the privilege, though of course I've given it no small thought. I have spent much time trying to separate the things of man from those that belong to the Divine, and when I have done separating them, I find there is not so great a difference. Here on Earth, we cannot see that, but when we have put off this body we will know more, and know that our differences make no difference at all to the Seven. Each of us, from the lowest to the highest, toils in their way to make the world a better place, and by our labor and by our service we are holy."

"Then why are we fighting?" asked the knight, and grinned as if he were humoring the other man. "If all our differences will be resolved once we get to the Heavens, why do we not lay down our arms and embrace all who we meet as brethren?"

The septon smiled himself and said amiably, "The scriptures say it is a matter of working towards the common good, a question of sharing everything - even thoughts, feelings, lives - entirely equally. Each of the seven teaches a way to, through laboring towards the common good, cease to live as individuals. To go into the force of life, like a drop falling into a river. Only the men who may give up their jealous selves, their futile individualities of happiness and sorrow, will they be worthy of the Seven Heavens."

Lancel wondered if he'd ever heard something that sounded so glorious as that. Ser Foote looked less impressed. "And you may cure a headache by removing the offending head. Ideal advice, which nobody was built to follow, is no advice at all."

"True, though it's heaven we speak of, remember. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But here, where our ancestors came from, you are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be. And perhaps one day we will all perfected, but until that day comes, it is enough to say that we need peace in this land so that men may think of the Seven, and of their heavens instead of battle and war."

"I'll leave that to you, I think. I have little taste for sitting and thinking of Heaven, and I will leave that to you and the other septons. I am a man of battle, I have been so all my days, and I pray to the Warrior that I live all my life in war, as befits a man."

"Be careful what you pray for," said Septon Torbet, looking gently at the knight, "for the Gods will certainly give it to you."

At last they'd come to a castle that frowned out over a wild and savage land. Once a stronghold - or rather a fortified manor - of the Pentoshi meant to keep valuables and lives out of the hands of marauding dothraki, or raids from its owners rivals, it was no different then it had ever been, save the banner that hung listlessly in the wind above the gates, three ravens in flight, each clutching a red heart in its claws.

Far Country - Andalos - was ever a restless and unquiet land, but as he had ridden familiar paths through Lord Tygett's realm that autumn, he had dreamed deep dim dreams of those old days that were scarcely two decades ago, more years than he had lived, when men had first come from the West, all strong with faith and eager with zeal to wrest themselves a new nation, to restore what their ancestors had given up.

Lancel Lannister had crossed as well when he turned eight, because his uncle had long before, and because the battles that he had heard about had felt divorced from the endless predicaments and frustrations which so hedged the life he had left. He had felt relatively at peace at first. This had seemed a place where he could tell himself that time did not move, politics did not exist, love was waiting around every corner, and money an invention for the future. This new land had been but a vague haze of disconnected names and events in his mind, when compared with his home.

Still, starry eyed as he had been, it had taken him very little time to realize how far they had fallen once that heady spirit had been allowed to fade. Now back in the west men cut their neighbors' throats and cried out beneath the heels of ambitious lords and greedy masters, and in the mess that they made of their homelands they forgot that thin frontier where the remnants of a fading glory clung to their slender boundaries.

Amongst the ports and inland towns stood the grim forts of those sworn to the lords of the land, and the Order of the Dragon loomed like watchdogs above the land and the fierce soldier-monks stood always clad in mail and wore arms day and night, ready to ride to any part of the kingdom threatened. But how long could that thin line of ramparts and men along the coast stand when it's home and turned away and forgotten them?

In those first heady days before he was born, when the call went out to reclaim long abandoned lands, Ser Lyn Corbray had been one of the first to kneel beneath the seven-pointed star and travel East, a second son with little to hold him to his home. Ser Lyn Corbray had little use for his brother, the Lord Corbray, and had grown tired of dwelling within a hall that would never be his own. Now he held a line of grim gray castles near the rolling limestone hills of Norvos, holds that rose boldly in hostile land. Leagues lay between Ser Lyn Corbray's holdings and the nearest friendly settlement. To the east, across swift, stony streams honeycombed with caverns and past communal terraced farms and small villages lay savage foes. Few had fought so hard or so well as Ser Lyn Corbray, but little of the fruits of conquest had fallen to him. A wanderer and adventurer, living by his wits and the edge of his sword, Ser Lyn Corbray had benefited little from a lifetime at war, for all that he had won a red name for himself in the blind melee of that vain Crusade it had earned him more hard blows than gold.

He rode alone, mostly, and time and again his many enemies thought him trapped, but each time he had won free, by craft and guile, or by the sheer power of his sword arm. For he was like a desert lion, this knight of Three hearts and three ravens who schemed like a Magister, rode like a Centaur, fought like a blood-mad tiger and preyed on the strongest and fiercest of the outland lords, on both sides.

Since he had been last this way the fortified wall had risen higher, and there were sentries on the wall. The servant who greeted him was a scraping from some Bravossi Gutter that Lyn Corbray had taken it upon himself to instruct as a knight. He was perhaps sixteen, and might be passable some day. The squire led led him through the grass-grown enclosure, past all the clutter of an enclosed fort. He could hear somewhere the sound of an armorer or blacksmith beating on his anvil. Some herdswomen clad roughly in skin tunics were driving sheep inside for the night. Any fool could recognize all these preparations for a siege, and Lancel did not know whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

The lord of the castle was tall, rangy and handsome, with frightful blue eyes that gleamed in the dark like a rats, a strong stubborn jaw, and dark hair he wore shoulder length tied back in a queue.His mail was worn, his velvet cloak shabby and torn, and the gems were long gone from the hilt of sword and dagger.

The poverty reflected in his apparel was as well represented by the fort itself, which was barren beyond even the Petty Lords of the North, those mountain-folk in Westeros' poorest kingdom who even in good years ate more gruel than meat. Weeds grew rank in the courtyard and over the filled-up well, no merry villagers bearing grain and wine thronged the barren courts, and no gayly clad pages sang among the dusty corridors. Ser Lyn Corbray had no revenues, he lived by plunder, as a lion without a pride lived, and like a lonesome lion his life was lean and hard. He was sworn to Lord Tygett, more out of convenience then any higher conviction, and was one of the most significant of that brotherhood of strange bedfellows, second and third sons to a man who had taken risks for what would never pass rightfully to them.

Ser Lyn Corbray sat on the rude bench, chin on fist and gazed at his guests. He called for food, and eventually it arrived, and Ser Corbray and Ser Foote ate together as equals, adventurer turned petty lord and soldier of fortune turned captain, quenching their thirst and satisfying their hunger with gigantic draughts of wine and huge bits of meat torn by strong teeth from a roasted joint.

"The horselords are coming again. And Pentos means to force the issue. You have only forty-five men-at-arms, you can't hold this pile of ruins long." Ser Foote warned his host at long last.

Ser Lyn Corbray shrugged. "I have sixty-eight family men working my land: old soldiers mostly, who will stand with me. I can add another two dozen horsemen and I have the coin to send for a few more." He replied, simply as that. To him, it truly was that simple. It might not be much, in the scheme of things, but he had spent his best years building it.

"They won't go around. They know better then to leave you at their back."

He shrugged again. "If the war's to be now or later, I would have it now. Even if it is against Dothraki."

All of the lords of Far Country had learned a healthy respect for the Dothraki, the terrible horsemen, the scourge out of the East. Dothraki were brute savages, creatures that lived only for destruction, or so the septons said, at least the ones who didn't go so far as to claim that they were the descendants of literal demons of smoke and shadow, conjured in Asshai and given life by blood, spoken of by the prophets of old. Lancel had listened to both with rapt attention, and thought if there was ever a foe for a worthy knight to set himself against, it must be them.

They built no farms, they worked no land, they lived by murder and by enslaving any who stood before them. By any measure of reckoning they were less, and yet whenever they burst like a sandstorm out of the East, trampling all in their path, civilization crumbled before their oxtail standards, their lacquered armor, their kettledrums and terrible bows. Perhaps it was barbarism that was the natural state of mankind, that law, that order, that ownership and legacy and all civilization that was truly unnatural, nothing but the whim of circumstance in a land of plenty. And so perhaps barbarism must always ultimately triumph.

"I heard you've been reduced to raiding caravans." Ser Foote stated, trying a fresh tack.

"They have taken to defending them, but I fall on them nonetheless. I have a few chests of golden coins looted from caravans and taken as ransom for captive knights. Enough to pay my men, at least." His thin lips curled. "Unpaid garrisons serve too many masters." He stood up. "You're welcome to stay a while. Raid caravans with me."

"I am in service to a good Lord, and I have gold as well."

"I'm sure you do. Will Lord Tygett send men?"

"He intends to fight. Perhaps here. Perhaps not. You should bring your men to join the main body of troops. No sense in dying here.

"When they come in their numbers I will slip away. This is my land, Ser Royce. I've bled for it, I've fought for it, I know every dip and hill. I'll kill them in the hills and rocks, one at a time or all at once. And when they are dead, I will come back."

"You are a singularly dangerous man, ser."

"I am what I am." He said, sounding almost sad. "Someone has to be."

\+ + + + +

The keep was spartan. There were no wall hangings or tapestries or other decorations aimed solely at being easy on the eye. Everything about the keep was functional, the corridors narrow and the ceilings low to make swinging a sword difficult, tight spiral stairways, the corkscrew of stairs favouring the right-handed defenders fighting a retreat. It's foundations were stone, but the structure itself was timber and clay brick.

Yet there was beauty to be found nonetheless. Even now the last rays of the sun were shining into the tower, the whole sky, darkening to claret and soft lilac.

Stannis Baratheon watched the sunset with a stern face. He paced up and down, his hands shaking as he gripped them together behind his back. The gulls screeched around the fortress, a noise that had begun to sound like mockery. He’d spent the morning forcing orders through his clenched teeth at his hapless servants and men, but as the afternoon wore on, his voice had grown quieter and a dangerous calm had settled on him, a familiar calm. As the weeks passed, he did what he could. He made sure his men were dispersed where they might be of use. Already men under his protection sent furious letters and messengers demanding that his forces protect their own, but Stannis set them aside unread. The men had received their orders. They had built their fortifications for a reason, and there was nothing he could do. Not alone.

Stannis wished that Robert was here. For all his brothers failings, he would still have had suggestions, or at least a better idea of what to do to win than anyone else. As difficult as his brother was, he'd never won a war without him, and Stannis felt completely adrift, lost under the weight of expectations on him. His gaze strayed to the maps on the table, littered with small lead pieces. It was an incomplete picture, he knew. Soldiers and cavalry moved faster than the reports that reached him, so the stubby metal tokens were always in the wrong places. Yet if only half of the reports were true, then both armies were on the move, coming in from different directions, and he didn't have the men to deal with either of them.

Stannis clenched his fists as he continued to pace. He could support no more than three thousand men or so, not counting the men Robert had sent instead of coming himself. Robert had gone running to his friend's side and forgotten all about his brother, like always. He stared hungrily at the maps as if they might contain the secret to life itself. He had to take the field; there was no help for it. He had to fight. He hesitated, biting his lip. He could evacuate and save hundreds of lives before the assault. If he accepted the impossibility of taking the field against so many, he could devote himself instead to defending the heart of his estates. He might at least win time and space. He swallowed nervously at the thought. All his choices were appalling. Every one seemed to lead to disaster.

"I need six thousand men." he muttered to himself, then sighed in a parody of humor. If he were wishing for armies he did not have, he might as well ask for sixty thousand as six. He’d come to his brother with his hat in his hand, and then to Lord Tygett, a man who he thought, deep down, was unfit, and in his personal view there was no greater condemnation. But that had gotten him much praise and encouragement, but little actual assistance. It was infuriating. By the time that anyone else even understood the magnitude of the threat, all their gains would be lost.

Stannis looked out at the sunset once again. Stormpike was a superb fortress, with a double moat and massive walls that were eighteen feet thick at the base. Set on the coast and supplied by sea, it could never be starved into surrender. Yet he and Robert had broken it once, a little over a decade before. It could be taken again, with enough men and massive siege weapons brought in to hammer it.

He heard footsteps on the stone stairs as he stood there, back straight and hands clasped behind his back. He looked round in surprise as he saw his wife ascending after him, one hand pressing against the exterior wall to keep her balance.

"What's this? You should be resting, not climbing cold steps." He gritted his teeth. "I'll have your maid…"

"Peace, Stannis," Lady Lysa replied, panting slightly. "I know my own strength and I sent her away. I just wanted to see the view that keeps you up here each evening." She leaned on the wide sill, and let out an appreciative breath. Stannis wished he could join her. He was able to appreciate that, objectively, the dark gold and rose sunset was beautiful, but that meant nothing to him, any more than his lady wife's beauty did. There was no tenderness in Stannis. His face is stern, even grim. From his nose to either side of his mouth are grooved two deep lines and his forehead has two hard lines at each eyebrow. He never smiled. He didn't seem to know how.

"I thought they were offering us a truce? Lord Buckler's wife told me that the Magisters offered six years of peace."

"Lord Buckler has a lot to say to his wife, it seems." Stannis replied sourly, gritting his teeth some more. The tower was as private a place to be found in all the world, but even so, Stannis hesitated a moment before he stepped close to his wife, running his hand over the bulge of the child growing within her. "They offered peace. But it seems that it was a pretext, to try and convince us to lower our guard while they gathered their strength." And there would be a war now. In a few week the roads would be choked with people fleeing their homes, looking for safety, for shelter, for a place behind the front. And then war would be upon them again. Already the mood was growing ugly among his men. he had reports of unrest and it had only just begun to spread. "He should send her back to Riverrun, or to Storm's End, but he is selfish. He wants to be there when this son is born. After three daughters, he was sure that this time he would have a son.

But the war was coming. He knew that it was going to fan flames in Westeros, even if they did not. He did not know if the unrest would reach as far as the king himself, but war, like fire, had a habit of getting out of control. And did not know what to do with the ashes. He did not know what to do.

"No matter what happens next year, this year must come to an end first. Did you get the news about your family?"

"My sister is the one doing well, or so I've heard. She's grown shrewish, but her husband seems to dote on her in spite of that. My father has not improved either, I'm told he is failing faster than the doctors can bleed him." For all her ambivalent tone, he knew she would have liked to see them again. But with her pregnancy, she had not risked the sea voyage.

"And his son? How old is your brother now, scarcely twenty? And almost a Lord Paramount!"

She smiled a little to hear him taking an interest, even in such a superficial way, and began to inform him of the gossip, but in all honesty he was only paying rudimentary attention. His gaze had wandered out of the window again. At thirty-three years old, he was strong and healthy, but he felt again the sense of creeping despair at the thought of armies marching slowly into view in the distance.

His wife knew him better than he gave her credit for. "You're going to beat them all, I'm certain. If I know you at all, I know you don't lose easily - and that you never give up. My family is the same way, and it takes one to know one."

He rubbed her stomach again, and he felt a surge of affection. Outside, the evening had come in shades of purple and gray, and by the time he descended it would be dark.

"I'll come down with you," he said. "I don't like the idea of you all alone on those steps."

"Thank you, Stannis. I always feel safe with you."


	4. Jon, Lyanna, Elbert

    The ship plunged, dropping into a wave with such suddenness that it seemed to leave Jon's stomach behind. Spray spattered across the deck, adding to the crust of salt that sparkled on the railings and every exposed piece of timber. The sails creaked and billowed above his head, and Jon, who was sitting on the bulwarks far forward, could not think of any experience quite like it. Despite a reasonably warm day, he was wearing furs, which looked like oily and dense black feathers from a distance.

    How was it, he wondered, that he had reached seventeen years of age and never been to sea? He shook his head, breathing in air so cold and fresh that it stung his lungs, savoring the wild, briny smell. The second mate roared an order over the swishing of waves and the slap of water against the ship's sides and the creaking and the overall high steady roar of air and water, and the sailors began heaving on ropes as thick as Jon's wrist, moving the wooden yards round to keep the sails full and tight. It was a beautiful vessel, the finest among the twenty or so that Robert owned, a dromond with a gilded prow which was shaped like the head of a dragon with wide-open mouth and outstretched wings likewise gilded, a legacy of his grandmother. She had three masts and one hundred oars a side (though they were only used when the wind failed or for for getting in and out of harbor), and was making better time than most of the rest of the fleet that had been dispatched from the Stormlands, though a few of the sleek, deadly war galleys had kept pace and were escorting them, painted in bright colors, their gunwales hung with shields, the black and gold banners of the Stormlands streaming from their mastheads, properly called snacks, or sometimes snake boats, the slim, elegant descendants of the Ironborn longships.

    It had long been Robert's practice to keep a larger standing army than most Lords of Westeros. Like all Lords he'd rely upon levies and his bannermen in a pinch, but he always maintained a core of experienced men. He found his soldiers from the poorest parts of his territories, from mines and fields and apprentices who had fallen out with their masters and had nowhere else to go. There were a few volunteers, but most were men who had been too drunk to resist a tap on the head when the recruiters came through their villages, and marched them away. And once they were in, they were in for good, no matter what they'd planned for their life.

    It came to near eight thousand men, well-drilled infantry armed with poleaxes, with pikes, and big yew longbows of the sort that the Riverlands was famous for, and the training to use them. Robert, so the story went (as his mother told it), had first learned about the weapons from Ser Brynden Tully when the two had found themselves conversing at Ned's wedding (she had heard about it second-hand, since she'd been dancing with Jaime Lannister at the time), and Robert, of course, had seen the potential right away, powerful bows a foot longer than most of their kind, a weapon more deadly, accurate, far-reaching and with a faster rate of fire than crossbows. In fact, he'd been so taken with the conversation and the ideas it gave him that he'd forgotten all about the bedding and hadn't noticed it taking place on the other side of the table, which had apparently had her in stitches. It was a massive and expensive force for peacetime, but in war? And not just any war, but a war on two fronts, both to be fought far from the Stormlands? You'd have to be as audacious as Lord Robert Baratheon to even consider trying it.

    After his uncles Stannis and Renly has departed Storm’s End, three weeks had passed in a gallop of meetings with vassals, financiers, mercenary commanders, ships captains, armorers, equestrian masters, bowmen, victuallers and explorers. At last, they’d been ready, and Robert had sent a third of this standing force to reinforce his brother in Far Country, nearly two thousand men-at-arms and archers, and the accompanying five hundred knights in eight ships. They'd sail through the Kingdom of the Stepstones, another of King Aerys conquests (gifted to the Iron Islanders who exploited them ruthlessly), and land at Lionsgate and resupply. Renly had been placed in charge of the men, but with the understanding that he would relinquish command to Stannis as soon as they arrived at Stormspike. Fully half of the rest Robert was taking North with him, in the rest of his ships, leaving scarcely any men at all to hold his own lands, though surely that wasn't a concern in a country at peace.

    So far, the expedition was going well. The wind was largely fair, though they had run into calm for the best part of two days and had to row,  and everyone had taken a turn on the oars, even Robert himself (who'd been in a mood to show off and taken an entire oar himself, which he was obviously regretting after an hour but couldn't back down on out of pride) and within six days they had rounded the outside of the Sapphire Isle, beautiful Tarth (more for the pleasant view than anything), and were making good time, at their current rate they'd reach Gulltown within a few days, a day of so ahead of the rest of the fleet, and pick up supplies and more men and ships, then onto White Harbor.

    Once they'd arrived there, at the North's main port and only city, Jon, his father and mother and three brothers would disembark and ride to Winterfell for Robb's wedding (which he still had trouble believing), while the bulk of their forces would continue North in their ships and sack Harhome, the only settlement the Wildlings had that anyone south of the wall knew about. The men would then fortify that settlement, and dispatch the ships back to White Harbor for the Northerners, the armies commanders (his father, his uncle Eddard, and whichever of the extended Arryn clan elected to join them), and the supplies needed to mount a campaign. By then they hoped to have a good idea of the enemy numbers and position, and would move to force them into an engagement. Put like that, it all sounded so simple.

    It was late in the year, and the ship's captain had plotted a conservative course, keeping within sight of the coast the entire journey, but no storm troubled had troubled them as the ship lurched its way on grey seas, with cold autumn winds battering from the east.

    Jon had kept busy, Robert had been insistent he kept up his training, and would not be budged on the issue, and so he appeared at daybreak fully armed and remained all day until the sun set. They had wrapped the mainmast in a thick linen canvas quilted hard, and Jon practised at this informal pell all day, cutting, thrusting, hammering away with a tourney sword rather then the castle-forged steel that Donnel Noye had fitted him with, the hilt still new with the familiar crowned stag enameled on silver. At first he must have looked ridiculous, staggering around trying to find his balance on the pitching deck, but he'd acclimatized, and now held his stance as he worked himself as hard as he could.

    At other times, Edric would join him, or one of the knights or lordlings aboard, and they would spar with him, matching blunted swords or spears up and down the deck, carefully so as not to disturb the sailors. Everybody was putting in an effort to keep themselves sharp, now that a battle loomed ahead with a terrible enemy they didn't know or understand (because of course, none of them had ever heard his mothers stories of wildlings, to them the wall was something impossibly distant on the edge of the world) and every day had its tale of broken bones, sprains, and bruises. Of course he would take long breaks in which he merely sat in the bows and watched the sea, as he was now. Jon never spoke to the sailors but he knew that they had developed a healthy respect for him as a fighting man.

    That did a little to settle his own doubts. He had a set of tourney armor he'd worn in a few tilts in the odd tournament, the armor a beautiful bronze color that Renly had helped him pick out and that he was very proud of, though he was never more than an average lance on his best day, and was what his mother had termed an 'adequate' horseman. He knew how to fight, but he'd never had to, really. This was to be his first war, and he didn't know what to make of that.

    The wind was freshening and the mates were bellowing orders. The sailors were moving busily once again, loosening shrouds and folding great wet sections of sails, then tying them off before making it all taut once again. He dropped his gaze, and gasped to see sleek grey dolphins racing along the surface of the sea, keeping perfect pace with the ship. They darted and leaped as if they played a game, daring each other to see how close they could come. He watched them with wide eyes as 'Princess' rode easily across calm blue waters, her rigging sharply defined against a clear sky. The shipís crew were aloft, busy with the sales, and above them there was nothing but lazy cumulus clouds. Jon sighed with pure animal pleasure as felt the warm sun against his skin.

    Edric Baratheon strolled across the deck to the galley, where the cook was ladling out the contents of a great iron pot to all comers. The smoke from the cooking fire lifted in a high and unbroken line into the clear sky.

    Ser Roland Storm, the bastard of Nightsong emerged from the hold after his little brother. Roland Storm was a tall man, and a strong one, as evident by the hump of muscle on his neck and right shoulder that shifted as he gestured, the legacy of decades wielding a heavy sword.  He had oiled his hair again, Jon noted, making a black slick of shining curls to frame a face that was pockmarked, his lips were full and blood-swollen, covering teeth that had been chipped in many fights, and his eyes were dark pits.

    But there was a spark of contentment in those cold eyes today, and in the way that the knight paced slowly across the deck. He looked as happy as a terrier that had just spent a night in a barn full of rats.

    The men who followed him, however, looked far less content. Two of them had their arms in slings. One hobbled. Others sported ugly grey bruises or beards matted with darkly dried blood. As they passed the bastard to find places in the line to be fed some of them looked sullen, others rueful, most resigned.

    "Breakdown of discipline?" Jon asked his brother.

    Edric shrugged.  His eyes were extremely blue, like the very center of flame. "Must have been. Or else Ser Roland woke up on the wrong side of the bed." He replied, before handing Jon a plate of stew and a cup full of water. Jon took both gratefully, putting the stew aside and taking a long draught of water. It was amazing how thirsty he always seemed to be since he'd boarded.

    Ser Roland Storm was now conversing with Ser Gawen Wylde, who was chewing the white mustache that drooped over his thick lips. Jon turned his gaze away quickly. He'd never liked the man very much.

    His fathers master-at-arms had trained him and all three of his brothers in weapons and tactics, beginning so early that Jon could not remember a time that he had not been there, vibrating in anger at a poor stroke, or demanding to know who had taught them to hold a shield 'like a quivering dornish cunt' or some equivalent (Ser Wylde was not a man to repeat himself), or hissing furiously at footwork that was too slow, or left some opening. With no effort of recollection, Jon could recall five broken bones by the man, two in his right hand, a cracked forearm, a rib, and one small bone in his foot when the knight had stamped down to break a lock. Each one had meant weeks of pain in splints, and having bear with the training anyway while he recovered.

    He was sure that the man was loyal to the House of Baratheon, like a particularly savage old hound, but that did not make him any easier to endure.

    "Almost hard to believe it, Robb about to be married." Jon said with a chuckle and a wondering shake of his head, turning to think of more pleasant subjects than his master-at-arms, of the serious boy, his cousin and the best friend he'd ever had. "And like this, too. He's the last man I can imagine doing something like this."

    Edric only knew Robb Stark from his brother's stories about him, but he smiled as well. "Guess they must really be in love."

    "Guess so." Jon agreed, and shook his head again, still smiling.

    The two fell into a comfortable silence, watching the wind and the waves a while. Jon had missed this. Times like this, simple companionship with his brothers, had grown fewer over the last year. There was a darkness about Jon, a distance between them that they all sensed, if none of them entirely understood it. Jon didn't fit in, in Storm's End. Not truly.

    He found himself intelligent rather than direct, reserved in his attitudes and actions - perhaps even somewhat shy, and critical in a place that was far too straightforward for purely intellectual criticism - found himself closer to his mother than his father, and the heir to a northern culture which has always been antagonistic of the blunter morals of the south.

    "So, it'll be you next. Getting married." Edric said casually, as though he wasn't broaching a subject he and Jon's other younger brothers had wondered about for years, why Robert seemed to have no interest, or intention, of finding his heir a suitable match, or any match at all.

    Jon shook his head. "I doubt it." He wouldn't be. He knew the reason why, his mother had confided it to him in the Godswood outside Storm's End a little over a year ago. "How about you? Looking forward to being fostered?"

    "I suppose." Edric replied, with a shrug. "I've always wanted to see Dorne."

    "So have I." Jon admitted, and the two exchanged a grin. "Why Dorne? Are you sure that's where father means to send you?"

    Edric looked a little guilty. "Well, he hasn't told me anything, yet, but I overheard him talking to mother about it, and she sounded all for it. And, I mean, father tends to do whatever she tells him, so it's her that'll make the decision, you know? Just for a few years to earn my spurs, he says." Edric said, than shrugged.

    "You know, I've always wanted to see for myself what lies beyond the wall as well, and that's the way it looks like we're sailing."

    "One adventure at a time?"

    "Something like that."

    "Do you think you could take me with you? I could be your squire." Edric asked eagerly.

    "I'm not a knight, Edric." Jon said gently. That had been another thing his mother had explained, another night in the godswood. There were times he almost resented her, how she had her crooked and indirect paths for his life to follow all planned out, and reasons that she wouldn't explain. _'You're my son, Jon. Mine. Mine and nobody elses, to do with as I will.'_

    "You're not a knight yet. But you will be by the time we've won, father will dub you the first time he gets an excuse." Edric's eyes were starry, he was imagining the wildlings from his mother's stories, terrible beasts in the shape of men. It all seemed a fine adventure to Edric, and what was wrong with that?

    Afterall, Jon was thinking of it too.

    "I won't let him, Edric. Not that way." He sighed. "I want to earn a knighthood. Not just get given it." More quietly "otherwise it doesn't mean anything, and isn't worth having."

    Edric shook his head with a grin, put his right arm across Jon's back, and gave it a squeeze of pure affection. "What, you think you won't earn one? It'll come easy to you, wait and see."

    Jon only shrugged. His mood, which had seemed so light before, was beginning to turn heavy. "I hope so, Edric. I hope so."

    Edric hadn't noticed his brother's change in mood. He was looking at the sky. "So what's this about you not getting married?"

+    +    +    +    +

    It started gently enough: merely rippling patterns into the rolling surface of the water and scattering the light of the setting sun. Then, gradually, it became bolder, rushing across the water in sudden charges that sprayed ruffs of white water up from the top of the swells. The foam shone ice-white as it flecked the air, the chill brightness belied by the warmth of the breeze.

    The sea followed the winds lead, and rolled its waves higher and sharpened their ridges, so that instead of just little flecks the wind could rip great white sprays from their heads.

    To her dismay, Lyanna had discovered on the first night of the voyage that she was still as susceptible to seasickness as she’d been during her first sea voyage at the age of fifteen. After only a short time since she boarded, her stomach had heaved into her throat and she'd rushed to the rail, guided backward and downwind by exasperated sailors. She spent the next day and night at the stern, lolling over grey, rolling waves, helpless as a child and even sicker then she ever remembered being. Since then, she'd tried everything she could think of, but most of them had only made it worse, and now she was in the tiny cupboard of a cabin in the aft, making the most of the space afforded to her. Of course, the cabin in question had been built for a royal princess two generations ago, so it was bright with painted panels (all birds and beasts (stags, harts, doe and fawns, admittedly featuring predominately) and crimson dragons and vines), and had actual windows of thick glass and lead above the bed that let the light in. There was not, however, any space for furniture save the bed and the chest of possessions, and so Robert was sitting upon it, busy with his maps. He'd planned the campaign in something of a hurry, and there was still much he had to do. In one corner was a chest containing clothing and other necessaries, atop which an ornately carved warhammer lay. Blunt on one side and spiked on the other, the metal of its construction glowed as silver as a winter moon despite the dirty, second-hand light that filtered in.

    Normally, Lyanna would have joined him, but in her current state all she felt fit for was what she was doing, sitting on the floor and shuddering. She cursed, low and loud, muttering the profanities with the sort of quiet intensity that other people might have reserved for prayer. The fact that she was kneeling on the floor, leaning over a basin as other people of more spiritual mien might lean over a shrine, added to the illusion, she supposed, though she was in no state to find the comparison amusing. Robert absent-mindedly held her hair away from her face. He loved her hair, at once rough and soft in his hands.

    As she suffered, she tried not to be resentful at her husbands iron stomach. The Baratheon's claimed distant descent from a Storm God, and though she didn't think it very likely she did concede that her own ancestors were equally improbable and had never questioned them, so perhaps she shouldn't be surprised he was so unbothered. Yet she couldn't help it, and at the same time she felt groggily grateful to him - he'd not left her side since the sickness began, wiped the perspiration from her face with a cool, wet cloth, fetched her a vial of ginger syrup and then gently persevered until she had choked it down, but it was no good. Lyanna hated boats, and everything about them. It had taken coaxing to get her into this one, and if he imagined she would get back into it once they disembarked at Gulltown, then there was going to be a fight.

    Robert's attention was largely occupied on his maps. There were many maps in his library at Storm's End, not that he used it much except when he needed to refer to something - Robert was hardly been the sort of person you thought of as a reader. Most of the maps were of the continent of Westeros; but the one he was busying himself with was smaller than that, and only showed the east Coast as it faced Essos. All of the ports, harbors and places to berth ships had been carefully drawn, though to the south and north it became vague and sketchy, particularly around the Stepstones. Around the ports it is marked whether there is good farmland to feed troops or victual a fleet, and at the entrance to the ports it showed the bed of the river or the sandbanks.

    Her face was waxy and clammy, and there were shadows under her eyes. She scowled at him, and asked whether there was any sign of the storm abating. Robert, who had not been married to her for fifteen years without learning a thing or two, kept himself from laughing with a visible effort, and instead leaned over and showed her the map and where they were relative to Gulltown. The map, she had noticed, had a most unfortunate quality of making distances seem far less than they were. Looking at it, it was all too easy to imagine crossing distances of miles in a single step. "Another night and a day." He promised her. "Then we'll see Elbert, and our son, and take a break from boats long enough for you to feel better." He didn't add that this was as fair weather as anybody could ask for, he knew she wouldn't take it well.

    "My father made this." He had told her instead, trying to take her mind off her unsettled stomach. "It took him the better part of a year, but King Aerys demanded it, and so he rode up and down the coast, making note of everything that might be useful."

    "We should have ridden up the coast." She groaned out.

    "It'd have taken us three months to bring this many men that far, and the rest of Westeros wouldn't have thanked us for marching an army through their lands." He replied. Lyanna did not look won over by these arguments. She looked all the more determined, if anything.

    "Come on, stand up. Maybe some fresh air will do you good."

    She didn't look convinced. "The sea did this to me." She replied, a frown-line creased her brow, with a deep horizontal slash. Usually, it's appearance forewarned of an argument in the making, it meant that his wife had made up her mind, and would not be budged. Robert was never a wise man, and tended to ignore the signs, but her sickness had made him as fussy as a mother hen, if about as useful. Cressen was far too old and frail to make the trip, and some experience had turned him against maeters he wasn't intimately acquainted with, so anybody who might be of use in settling her down was on another ship. It was an oversight he never would have made, if he hadn't departed in such a hurry. Still, that was always his way, impulsive, boyish, rushing toward what he wanted, never weighing costs. In the right circumstances, those could be very attractive traits, but there were times when she was less kindly disposed to them.

    "Then eat something." He suggested. She tapped a finger against the basin, and raised an eyebrow. "Broth, or something else that will settle your stomach."

    Even the thought of eating made her nausea worse. "You should talk. You've been eating too much for years."

    "Nonsense. Meat and drink gives a man figure, and wine thickens the blood. If anything, you should eat more."

    Despite herself, she laughed. "If you were half as fit as me, you'd have agreed to make the journey on horseback, and I wouldn't need to endure this."

    "And we'd either miss the wedding, or leave the army behind."

    "Or simply arrive separately."

    "We could try that," admitted Robert, "but then my men tend to get a bit lost without me there to tell them what to do." And he said it so earnestly you could almost take it seriously. She laughed again

    She still felt queasy, but she was starting to feel better, and her stomach had settled enough that she pushed away the basin, and wiped her face as thoroughly as she could, then sat next to him on the bed. "It will be an adventure, crossing the Wall." He said at last. On his father's map, there was nothing at all to see, any more than there was on Skaagos. Just an outline of the coast, and a dot where Harhome was expected to be.

    She nodded. "I wanted to, once." She replied, holding him closer, thinking again of that half-wild girl who'd once stared at her out of the mirror.

    "Well, it's never too late."

    She raised an eyebrow. "A bit late for what I had in mind." She wrapped an arm against him, and he leaned against her, resting some of his weight on her.

    "Feeling a little better?"

    She grunted in response. "I suppose I would like to see a giant." She replied. "And it's easier than losing you and having to train up another husband. I’m past my best years, and I've only just got you properly broken in."

    He sighed, "Why do I love you, you selfish, vain, infuriating woman?"

    She shrugged. "I think you like a challenge."

+    +    +    +    +

    Lord Allard Royce had once, long ago when he had lived, dreamed of a wind which blew down all the castles and towns - blew down the mountains themselves, and left the world as a blank slate ready to be started again, and perhaps this would be the wind to do it. It was blowing round the Aerie now. It whistled, hummed, throbbed, boomed in the chimneys and against the shutters, on the roof and the walls. It seemed almost alive creature: some monstrous, elemental being, wailing its damnation, the stone towers thrilled under it, trembling bodily like the bass strings of musical instruments. The slates flew off and shattered themselves with desultory crashes.

    In the eastern ocean it harried the sea flat, lifting water bodily out of water and carrying it as spume. in the woods it forced trees to bend to it, making branches whip and snap.

    It was approaching midnight, and the Justice Room was near the base of the Aerie. It was not as empty as it should have been.

    Each of the gathered men wore a silk jupon blazoned with the moon and falcon, distinguished in the case of the more distant relatives with various labels of cadency, so that they looked like a hand of playing cards spread out. Some wore the moon-and-falcon sky blue and cream quartered with other houses, others wore it in a lozenge with their own trappings, or impaled upon the same.

    They were the gathered together a respectable portion of the extended Arryn clan, or at least the men, and in lieu of their patriarch, for though Jon Arryn had never had any children of his own, his family had been more fortunate, to the point that they were all used to aunts who were children, or nephews who were there own age, and the number of his living descendants was an envy to many, but, as usual, they were quarreling.

    "She won't fight." It was Ser Denys Arryn who announced it scornfully. He was another big warrior, another scarred knight grey-bearded before his time who had participated in too many charges, stood in too many shield walls and seen too many friends cut down. He was wearing the symbol of his house, but the place of prominence was given to his own arms, an eagle with outstretched wings holding a fish in it's talons. His son, Ser Jasper Arryn, named for Lord Jon Arryn's brother just like his uncle Ser Jasper Waynewood who was but two years older than he, nodded. Ser Jasper Arryn was his father in miniature, at least as his father had been at that age, handsome and gallant and brimming with courtesy, curly sandy blond with an aquiline nose all the family shared, vivid blue eyes and the easy smile of a young man who well knew the potent appeal of his own charm. Across the room, Harold Hardyng was glaring at him, more caught up in their private quarrel than the larger quarrel taking place. Harold had a reputation for battlefield heroics and recklessness, and had a weakness for things he couldn't afford, at least on his stipend. He was known to be looking to amend that by finding a wealthy heiress, and putting her dowry to good use.

    "She might," Lord Elbert Arryn allowed, "at least, if the prize is large enough." And it went without saying that the prize was huge beyond reckoning. Elbert was the heir to the Aerie, he wore his hair clipped very short, had no beard, and was tall, thin and graceful in his movements, and he seemed neither young or old - the sad, wise look of his face made him seem much older, and his energy made him seem much younger. Still, despite his amiable look, the more observant noticed that his men still jumped whenever he gave orders.

    Lord Jon Arryn had gradually relinquished the responsibilities of Lordship, feeling he'd long earned his relative retirement, and so he had already spent most of the day in the justice chamber where they were now gathered, hearing petitions and making rulings. Lord Jon Arryn was fortunate in his heir, everyone agreed, for Elbert would be a great lord. He understood that each man had to be allowed to have his say, that each one would give his fealty if he could be sure that a lord will repay him with protection. He understood that wealth is not in land but in the men and women who work the land. That the wealth and power of the Kingdom of the Mountains and Vale depended upon the love of the people who served. If they would do anything for Elbert – as they would do anything for his uncle – then he was possessed of an army on call, for whatever need. And that was real power, real wealth.

    "But she won't." Ser Jasper Waynwood replied. He was a tall man, broad in shoulder, and his jupon and trousers were cut with hard lines and silver trim to give the impression of armor. "Not against her son."

    The men all silently considered this for a while. "Won't she?" Ser Jasper asked, suddenly sounding a great deal less certain then he had last he opened his mouth.

    Again they all glanced at one another and silently considered this. "I'm a mere soldier, and nothing else. I'm certainly not a man to cast aspersions at the actions of royalty. Still, there is little love lost in that family, I fear." Ser Denys said at last.

    "It will depend," Elbert said at last. "There is every possibility that the Queen Dowager and His Majesty to reach an accord they can both live with. Perhaps the former queen building an alliance in this regard might simply be so much posturing - for every war this land of ours has suffered though, a dozen more never amounted to more than just so many angry words."

    "Unlikely. Somebody chose to involve the High Septon, who has since sent demands directly to the king, insisting that he will excommunicate him if he does not take his lawful wife back."

    "I do not think it likely that The King will let that scare him." Ser Harold Hardyng said with a laugh. For all that most of his extended family were known for their piety, he had been fostered among the Waynewoods, who claimed first men descent and their traditions and practices. Of the two religions he tended to prefer the old gods, who as far as it went asked for less and offered more. He rather doubted a sybarite like The King considered the Faith to anything at all except a tool of the monarchy, to ensure stability and unity amongst an otherwise divided continent. He stopped when he realized that nobody else was laughing.

    "He'd better, or he has no legal right to the crown." Elbert replied in all seriousness, and Harold blinked, then shook his head. Technically true, perhaps, but rather shaky.

    "No, he's right." Ser Jasper Arryn said with a sigh. "That won't be good enough for Great-Uncle, at least as impetus to break faith with his rightful liege. And he is our rightful liege, whatever the faith says. Or does The High Septon command the authority to release us from our oaths?"

    "We made our oaths to the office, not it's incumbent. If he is not king but merely Rhaegar Targaryen, than he has no right to demand them." Elbert pointed out reasonably. "In fact, he has no right to demand anything at all."

    "Sophistry."

    "Perhaps." Ser Denys acknowledged. "But what does it matter? She, the queen dowager, I mean, won’t risk it getting out of hand. Neither of them will. She wants the prize, but she’s terrified of the risk."

    "She might be, but she didn't get where she is by being afraid of risks." Percival Arryn, Elbert's oldest son spoke up. He was not the youngest man here, but he looked it.

    "Enough people are taking the possibility seriously that what they want might not enter into the equation. I myself have enemies who would prefer me to be far away from the capital for the next few years." Ser Denys Arryn pointed out. He sounded almost amused. "So I resigned my position on The Small Council, after some encouragement. I don’t know what I shall do next year. Maybe I’ll sail away to The Summer isles? They tell me the women there are the most beautiful in all the world. They are dark as ebony, their lips taste of honey, and they have no tongues." He laughed, then took another apple from a pouch and polished it against his sleeve. "For the moment, I am content to return to the nest for now, while in Kings Landing they all climb over each other like drowning rats. Though I shall have to return before long, at the very least, I intend to speak in defense of the Queen - The King's wife, not his mother. I could not live with myself if I did not. And should any of you be asked to court, I recommend you take the opportunity. Not to get involved, but it is an education to watch and listen, I think."

    "Who has the King replaced you with?"

    "The King has not replaced me with anyone - in all honesty I doubt that he's noticed I have gone, but his brother seems to intend to hold the seat informally himself, at least until he finds a suitable man to be Master of Laws. I worry about that lad, if he's not careful, he'll work himself into an early grave, and whoever will run the realm then? Not the people fighting over it for certain."

    "Lord Jon could write to them, if we could find the right words. The right words are always there, if a man's sharp enough to see them. I confess I do not, and yet I am sure there is something to be said."

    "He could, but even so little could prove dangerous." Jasper Arryn cautioned. "Before my father and I departed, The King's own Master of Coin took me aside, and wondered if The Kings death from illness or misadventure might just put all these unpleasant rumblings to rest. The crown would pass to his son, The King's brother would be made Hand - which is the job he is doing anyway, and this unpleasantness can be safely forgotten."

    Elbert rounded upon Jasper Arryn, staring into the other man's eyes, seeing tension. "And how did you answer him?"

    "I told him to go to the Stranger, uncle. And I should hope you would have said the same in my position."

    Elbert felt some part of him unclench in relief. "And thank the Seven for that."

    "Surely it wouldn't really come to that? Assassination of The King?" Harold Hardyng asked. Jasper Arryn raised an eyebrow. Scruples. You really found them in the most unexpected of places.

    There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool.

    "It seems unchivalrous," muttered Harold Hardyng when nobody answered, in the tone of a man who’s just discovered that his neighbours molested farm animals.

    "Well, Lord Jon will hold to faith, unless he's given an acceptable reason not to." Ser Denys said, not willing to indulge further in groundless speculation.

    "If the worst should happen, and I pray that it does not, who else will back The King against his mother?" Alric Stark asked, the youngest of the family present at only fourteen, oldest son of Benjen Stark and Alayne Arryn, and a northerner in every feature save his Arryn nose. "Should that unhappy event come to pass, I mean."

    "Well, if he can count on us, he can count on The North, The Stormlands and The Riverlands. Afterall, thanks to his father we're tied so tightly together that we can't go against them, or the go against us, without ripping our families in half." Elbert replied, and they all nodded. That was widely known to be the truth, that was the reason for all the betrothals among the heirs of the great houses, of binding them together with blood. By now, those four kingdoms were so interwoven that they were effectively undivided, at least in the Lord Paramount's families.

    "But who else can we count upon? The Iron Islands love the Queen, they remember it was she who gave them the Stepstones."

    "And they also know better than to involve themselves in quarrels that don't concern them, particularly quarrels far from the sea."

    "If only we were so wise, eh?" Ser Denys said.

   "Lord Lannister's loyalties are not likely to surprise anyone either. He was her husband's Hand, and it is common knowledge that he and the Queen dowager are close friends." Their were rumors that said that they were both rather closer than that, though that didn't seem worth mentioning. "But Lord Lannister is a sensible man. He wouldn't…" And then he stopped. He was fundamentally honest, and what Lord Tywin Lannister was known for was marching fast, killing without remorse, both on and off the battlefield and sometimes outside the law, and taking whatever he could hold. He wasn't one to bet on a losing horse, but that wasn't much of a comfort.

    "And neither is Dorne's. Not when it is their princess who is imprisoned, whose honor is maligned, and whose execution risks being the spark that sets this off. And of course Prince Doran and Tywin were the two who pressed for the Queen to remain upon the throne as sovereign." It had been the king's intention, and a controversial one, though it never had any real chance of being brought about. He had intended for his wife to be not a queen consort but a monarch in her own right, with all the rights and privileges thereof. But despite the backing of two such powerful lords, it had ultimately come to nothing.

    "And that leaves The Reach."

    Again there was silence, as the men present all considered the relative strengths of both sides. The Reach would side with whoever offered the most, and from the looks of things The Queen Dowager had more to offer.

    "Forgive me for saying it, but I mislike such a balance of forces. I've always found that I prefer a rigged game." Elbert said. "Speaking of which, there's a war in the North to think about for now." One by one they all nodded, some with more reluctance than others.

    "It's been a long summer. Common wisdom suggests an equally long winter." Alric Stark said. "Most likely whatever happens shall happen before winter hits."

    "So we keep our eyes open, for now."

    "Agreed."


	5. Steffon, Doran, Viserys

Steffon Baratheon, named for a grandfather long dead (it was agreed early on that Robert would name the boys, and Lyanna the girls), was with Lord Elbert in the blacksmith’s shed outside the Gates of the Moon. There was a forge within the fortress, of course, but Elbert had built this shed himself, with his own hands, making a hooded furnace from clay bricks. Then he had purchased an anvil and a set of blacksmith’s tools. He had always declared he wanted to learn the basics of the craft - blacksmithing - though as his wife frequently remarked wanting and being were not to be mistaken for the same thing. But Elbert was not one to dampen his enthusiasms. He employed a proper blacksmith, a heavy and taciturn man with the unlikely name of Ironbelly from King's Landing, whose task was to teach Elbert the skills of the trade, but Ironbelly had the measure of his employer, and understood that he would never teach Elbert anything, except new things to be enthusiastic about.

By now, all his extended family, Steffon's father, Eddard and doubtless many of the client lords of the Vale possessed items that Elbert had made; iron candle-stands with kinked shafts, misshapen cooking pots with ill-fitting handles or fire-spits that bowed over the flame. Still the smithy made him happy, and the hours spent beside its hissing furnace gave him feelings of peace that he certainly didn't get anywhere else. So he worked at it diligently, ever certain that just a little more practice would make him as carelessly proficient as his instructor. 

Steffon was his ward as well as his squire, and instructed as such. It was common enough to allow young men to grow to manhood away from their families. It toughened them and allowed them to make their last childish mistakes away from those they would disappoint. It built alliances as well, near as good as a marriage.

So Steffon had become Elbert's charge. On mondays, wednesdays and fridays his mornings were spent upon rhetoric and logic, classics and literature, mathematics, law, music, manners, and the survival skills of war and weaponry, along with the other young men (a dozen or so) who were wards of the extended Arryn clan. In the afternoons he learned tilting and horsemanship, hawking, fencing, archery, and the theory of chivalry, terminology of the chase and hunting etiquette. And he spent a great deal of time following Lord Elbert around, which was an education as well. Lord Elbert was a man little given to squandering time, always occupied with something, though not always something of any practical purpose, as his current whereabouts proved.

If Lord Elbert ever thought it beneath him and his dignity to work with his hands, he obviously got over it quickly. Indeed, his hands were flecked with small dark scars from the furnace of the smithy he had built, and he was hammering a shapeless piece of iron that he claimed was going to be a shoe for one of his horses, though Steffon didn't think that likely.

"So, I hear you found a girl." Elbert said conversationally. Elbert was an easy man to talk to, slightly past his prime at two score years, tall, spare and active in spite of his greying hair at his temples, he had the air of infectious enthusiasm that he swept up whoever he was talking to in without fail. The light from tforge threw into relief his prominent nose and high-cheekbones, in spite of the puckered scars where a blow from a morningstar had shattered his jaw he was not unhandsome. His mouth was large and generous and his grey eyes were startlingly bright against his weather-beaten skin.

Steffon's cheeks flushed a little, the look he gave halfway defiant, halfway rueful, and Elbert smiled at him, which comforted Steffon. Elbert had flair, with his expansive good humor, his ever-present munificence and unerring instinct for a dramatic gesture or eye-catching exploit, and time in his company was always notable for Steffon. Elbert made things happen, livened everyday routine and invariably brought excitement with him as he rode laughing into the castle bailey with a retinue even larger than The King's riding household, telling stories of clashes with the Mountain Tribesmen, who still raided along the frontier, forcing the unfortunates who lived in that region to pay the 'black tax' or see their tenant farms burned down, their animals slaughtered and their wives and daughters carried off.

Elbert led men-at-arms and knights to patrol those borders and guard against those incursions, but no matter what he did or how many they hanged there seemed no way to stop the raids completely. Elbert felt no anger directed at the mountain clans exactly, at least to most of them. He considered them all his subjects, and a few, such as Shagga son of Dolf, he regarded as friends (to the consternation of many), but Shagga could no more resist harvest raids than a dog could stop itself from scratching at fleas, and the rest of them were no better - many were worse.

But it was more then that, it was that Elbert had given Steffon as much attention and approval in seventeen months as Steffon had gotten from either of his own parents in fourteen years.

"That's right." He said, because it seemed like the thing to say, or at least, better than saying nothing.

"I also hear she is very beautiful."

"I think so." She was a spice merchants daughter named Saffron, she was a year older than he was, or perhaps a bit more, and she'd let him kiss her a few times.

"Don't worry overmuch, you'll figure it out, I daresay," Elbert said, with such obvious affection in his voice that Steffon was warmed by it.

So much so, that he found himself confiding, "That's what I'm trying to do." He'd meant to sound wry, but he had sounded wistful instead. He flushed much more noticeably and then laughed at himself. Elbert laughed, too. There were some things, Elbert knew, you couldn't talk about with your father, particularly if your father was Robert Baratheon. In carnal matters, Robert was too knowing, too assured. The mere fact that Robert had no inhibitions to speak of would, in itself, be inhibiting to a youngster, or so Elbert suspected.

As if making idle conversation, he observed, "I was about sixteen when I lay with a girl for my first time. In a stable loft, of all places! I thought it sounded warm, and romantic, and that we were unlikely to be disturbed, which shows what I knew. It stank, two grooms walked in on us, and I spent the next day picking straw out of my hair, and to make matters worse my uncle learned about it in short order and had me in his solar discussing marriage prospects, since it was obviously time." He smiled self-effacingly. "Worth it, though."

Steffon laughed, caught as he was between interest in the topic and a certain understandable embarrassment, and Elbert did as well; life would be so much simpler if someone took the time to explain things to young men rather than hope they stumbled into it on their own. After a moment, Steffon said, with what he hoped was tact, "Almost sixteen? isn't that… well, late?"

Elbert shrugged. "Might be. It's not a question of being late or early, really… more of being ready. And when you are, of the right opportunity presenting itself, or all the readiness in the world doesn't help."

Richard digested this in thoughtful silence, then said, "I heard father was thirteen…" 

"Did he tell you that? Or are they still passing stories around? Well, I don't doubt it," Elbert said dryly, and then turned toward the boy. "You know, Steffon," he said, suddenly so serious that he surprised himself as much as his friend's son, "you'd do best not to measure yourself by Robert's standards. Robert is his own man, he's a law unto himself in more ways than one, and a source of frustration to his friends. You needn't look so troubled. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with your father, by the seven he's one of my best friends. I'm only saying that, look, Robert has always known what he wants. And I suppose that his way is right for himself, but that's because he is himself. And anytime you try to walk around in someone else's boots, you're apt to find them a poor fit. How old are you now… fourteen?"

"Fifteen in October." Steffon hesitated. The talk having strayed to his father, he wondered what it would be like, to see him here. "Though I feel about done with being fourteen already." The outburst was so unlike him that Elbert had to smile.

"As I recall, I didn't think much of being fourteen either." He said. "At least it's not for much longer, eh?"

"No." Steffon replied, with a smile.

Elbert looked at the young man, and suddenly a dark thought crossed his mind, at the very instant that a billowing cloud blotted out the sun. When his own son reached Steffon's age, would there be anyone for him to turn to for advice or reassurance? He stared up at the cloud hovering above their heads, and felt a queer superstitious pang. The Arryns were unlucky, no matter how numerous they got there were always more graves than children. Then he resolutely shook it off, and picked up the hammer and gave the half-circle of iron a ringing blow, then pumped the leather-jacketed bellows that fed air into the furnace.

"Almost right," he said after hammering the thing for another frantic minute.

"Right for what?" Steffon asked cheekily.

Elbert only tossed the horseshoe back into the furnace then pulled off his fire-scarred apron and stretched, his joints clicking audibly. He was thin, but Steffon had seen him enough to know that there was a sinewy strength in his deceptively frail body. His large nose curved down, his eyes were bright and his mouth was turned down at the corners as if a deep-seated cynicism possessed him, but in character he was very much the opposite, amiable and good-hearted.

"It'll be right next time." Elbert said confidently.

"I'm sure it will." Steffon replied, his face carefully blank.

"Come on. The ships will be finding berthings in Gulltown. Your family might be on the road now, and doubtless you'll want to see them." He chuckled. "Besides, ships full of rowdy Stormlanders will seem less like an invasion if I make my way there, don't you think?" 

\+ + + + +

He breathed in as deeply as he could, as his brother wheeled the rolling chair that Maester Caleotte had made for him with its goose-down cushions and rumbling wheels along the paved garden path, letting the warmth of his lands fill his lungs and his heart. The blood oranges were ripe again. The courtyard where Doran Martell, his brother and his brother's wife were taking in the air was heavily scattered with the fallen fruit. The tangy, citrusy scent smelled like home to Doran, along with the scent of sun-baked tiles and flowers and, beneath that, like a desert dream, the scent of earth and water.

At the edge of the Shadow City, that queer place that was the only city in Dorne worthy of the name that had been built upon a fertile plain - the most fertile in all of Dorne, and was bordered by cork-oak forests, fields of rosemary and thyme, vineyards, orchards, and hoary ruins, was the ancient stronghold of House Martell at the easternmost end of a little jut of stone and sand, surrounded on three sides by the sea. To the west, in the shadows of Sunspear's massive walls, were buildings built from mud and straw, all colored brown and dun interrupted only by the colorful fabrics of awnings and screens. If to step into that city was to step into what remained of the long legacy of the Rhoyndar, then to gain admittance into Sunspear itself and it's spacious grounds was to enter a world wholly unlike anything else in Westeros, a haven of fragrant odors and subtle structure. 

Sheltered from the sun by the garden of palm avenues and orange groves, and ranks of resin-scented cypress, Prince Doran Nymeros Martell and his brother and sister-in-law ate sherbet made from the snows of the high sierras mingled with the syrups of oranges and strawberries. He wore a blanket despite the heat, to conceal the increasingly visible signs of his physical deterioration from them, though even this tiny act of pride cost him. He had grown so weak that even the weight of the blanket on his swollen limbs caused him pain. There was a time when he had been as lean and as supple as his brother, but now even he scarcely believed it, now he was feeble, and weak, and always in agony. Though he was but two-and-fifty, Prince Doran Martell both felt and seemed far older. 

The letter had come to Dorne with the first morning light, no more then a few words, too few, it seemed, to hold such black tidings, and sealed with a blob of red wax. Reading it, Doran's hands had shook, and he had locked himself in his solar, where he had read it a second time, and then a third. But though he had told nobody of what was said in the letter, word had gotten out anyway. 

When Prince Oberyn Martell and Princess Cersei Martell had presented themselves as a united front to confront him about the news, the way that they so rarely did, he had managed to reorient himself, and had suggested this walk, to clear his head and gather his thoughts, and give them the same opportunity. They were impatient with him, but had agreed. The Tower of the Sun was full of steps he could not climb, but he enjoyed the gardens around the keep, and had taken to holding court amongst the orange trees beneath the open sky. Cersei and Oberyn had allowed him only a short time to enjoy himself before they'd both began making demands, raising their voices in the struggle to be heard over one another.

The husband and wife fit together so badly they scarcely seemed to fit together at all, and could never find anything to agree about, except perhaps their daughter (and even than only in the broadest and most general terms). They fought constantly, and always found fresh things to fight about. And Doran always tolerated it with a slightly melancholy fond indulgence (because he liked her, in spite of himself, and he loved his brother very much and knew that any more normal relationship would bore him terribly) and tried not to think about how much he missed his own wife, whose wit, charm and sound advice he had depended upon more then she had ever known. He loved her still, all these years later, even after all the disagreements, all the quarrels, all the heartbreak and distance that had come between them. But he was less certain of her feelings towards him now, and knew that there was no sense in mourning it, for even to have it all once again it could only ever come to the same ending that it had, sweet as it would be.

"This is the final insult I will stand." His brother was raging. His eyes had narrowed in his dangerous way and his while body seemed tensed, ready to spring into an attack, as though he was expecting to put actions to his words come any moment. "He is a dead man. I shall not listen to his excuses or platitudes this time. He is a dead man. I will kill him with my own spear, I will kill him with my own hands if I have to." He was breathing heavily, his red rage had flared, and he had lost the battle to control himself, to let the killing thirst simmer down and wait for a more opportune time to reveal itself. He had lost the battle so completely he was repeating himself already.

The three of them had stopped, and Oberyn had released his grip upon his brothers chair so that he might face him. Doran sat on his wheeled chair beneath the shade of an orange tree, the ever-vigilant, ever-loyal Areo Hotah three paces behind as always, and listened inscrutably, peeling an orange as he listened with deft, well-practiced fingers. "He has shamed our sister and her children before the entire kingdom, and not for the first time!" The Red Viper grit his teeth so hard that they looked ready to shatter. "He shall die, better he suffer, but he shall die." Oberyn announced dramatically. Oberyn and Elia had always been very close, born only a year apart. Prince Doran had been almost a man grown by then, and having just put aside childish things and become a man, he found it difficult to understand and relate to his younger siblings, but there had been no distance at all between Oberyn and Elia. Elia had been born too early, had never been able to run about and play wildly with the other children, to leap and splash and dare risks, instead sheltered away for fear of her taking ill or being injured. the pair of them had gone everywhere and done everything hand-in-hand, Oberyn following his older sister around not realizing what a nuisance he was being, insistent that he was protecting her from harm, that he always would.

But it was Elia, in her quiet and subtle way, who had always protected Oberyn, who had kept him from getting into fights and soothing his temper before he could do something rash and perilous. As they grew older, their paths diverged, as they always must, but that bond had ever remained between them.

"He should die for this." His brother's wife agreed, her passion cold and sharp as her husband's was hot and fierce. Never had he seen her eyes so green, glazed glittering emeralds, pupils contracted to the merest slits of scalding fury. She was only a little younger than her husband, and she was his equal in a hundred ways, beautiful in a manner that was more threatening than alluring, glorious and golden and every haughty inch a Lannister. Theirs was an arranged marriage, arranged by their mothers. Her father had intended her for The King, who then had been The Prince, but King Aerys II had convinced him not to put forward the match. The two had given each other little but cause for tears, and yet Doran had married for love, and his own marriage had come to much the same conclusion, save that these days his arguments with his wife took place over miles and months, and by way of careful notes which echoed with what neither of them would bring up.

"He should indeed." Doran agreed, his own voice dry as the dessert, and just as lacking in passion. "But the murder of Kings should be better considered than this, or so it seems to me."

The Viper's nostrils flared, and he rounded on Doran, fists clenching. Doran looked helpless before that onslaught of fury, a frail man left infirm by gout, and though even at his hottest temper Oberyn would never be so far gone as to actually strike his brother, still the dark shape of Areo Hotah moved threateningly, two paces behind the Lord Prince. The big priest was now white of hair and beard, but his longaxe fit in his hand as well as ever. If Oberyn took another step…

But Doran did not so much as flinch, and meeting his gaze Oberyn detected something under his older brothers careful composure, something in his flat gaze that it took Oberyn a long moment to recognize because it was as bleak and passionless and pitiless as the desert that covered the bones of armies that had crossed into Dorne unwelcome, and he backed off at once. He knew rage when he saw it. "Is there any truth to the charges?" Doran asked calmly, keeping his voice even.

Oberyn threw up his hands and turned his back, walking out from beneath the shade.

"There are not even charges, as of yet." Cersei replied haughtily in his place. That was another of the few points of common ground, both she and her husband cared a great deal for Elia - rather more than they cared for each other, or so Doran suspected. Cercei had been his sister's handmaiden for a few years while her father was Hand of the King, and had largely seen the Princess of Dorne as a frail, aging rival she had intended to displace, but in spite of that - or perhaps because of that, the two had grown very close. Doran rather doubted that Cersei was capable of friendship, but she had managed an approximation of it with Elia. "She has been accused, imprisoned, and waits upon his majesties condescension to be brought to trial. And even it was, what of it? Perhaps The King should look to keeping his wife content, instead of complaining that some other man can do for him what he cannot." Oberyn, fool that he could be where his ego was concerned, perked up at that, as if she'd just offered him a compliment.

"But no, there is no truth" Oberyn added, once more facing his brother again and folding his arms. His brother was savagely handsome, tall and well built, with a narrow, dark face and sharp nose, a face that was as striking in it's maleness as Cersei's was in it's femininity, though there was something disconcertingly reptilian in his brothers aloof looks. His hair was lustrous and black interrupted by only a few silver streaks and receded from his brow into a widow's peak, which he usually wore long but had just cropped short, his mustache and beard were neatly trimmed and oiled to a gloss, and he wore a scent that smelled of lavender. It was astounding how much he reminded Doran of his father - there was scarcely anything of their mother in his brother at all. "There is not, and there could not be. Our sister tolerates her husband despite good reason not to, and if she has any wish for a paramour she has smothered that wish. If anyone has been wronged in this match than it cannot be said to be him, this is not the first time he has publicly humiliated her." Oberyn replied. He wasn't shouting anymore, he even sounded rational enough, but there was a wild and wayward gleam in his eye that was more dangerous still. Doran knew how to reign in his brother's anger, but once Oberyn made up his mind all he could do was try and direct him in a constructive direction. Left to his own devices, he'd act without thinking or restraint.

Rather than answer, Doran turned to stare at the horizon. It was a beautiful day, even with the promise of winter moving in from the North. The sky was gray with clouds that gathered on a breeze cooler than any in his recent memory, the trees heavy with their last burden of summer fruit, ready to be picked by the kitchen staff and preserved for winter, and he sighed heavily. He was thinking on the King, charming and knowledgeable and confident, mournful of eye and lonely of temperament, a man he'd never liked but never seen much harm in either. To Doran, The King had always seemed a mirage, a feverish wish that carried no substance.

"And it is the king who presses these accusations?" Doran pressed at last. Both of them looked affronted by his obvious reluctance to join them in swearing bloody vengeance, though doubtless they had expected it. "Yes." Cersei said, at the same instant her husband shook his head and said "No."

She glared at Doran's brother, hands on her hips and eyes threatening and challenging at once, but didn't speak further. Doran turned to look at him and motioned for him to continue. Oberyn Martell was well informed, he had a knack for information gathering and finding people to assist him with it - the closest he had ever come to assuming anything like responsibility. "The accusations come from the Hand of the King, though no more from his lips than the kings. Lord Connington makes no accusations himself, he allows his men to do that for him, then vouches for their integrity and honesty and champions them should anyone say otherwise, all without ever agreeing with what is said."

Cersei stamped her foot. "He may not say them, but the accusations come from him, and this mummery wouldn't fool our daughter."

Myrcella was eight, a sweet girl unlike either of her parents, who favored her mother as Oberyn was the image of his father. She was their only child, and Oberyn's only legitimate child. He'd had others, six of them, and would have had many more, if not for his marriage to Cersei. But the first time they'd fought over his indiscretions…

Well. What was done was done.

"No it would not." Oberyn agreed, but Cersei did not look placated.

"So then it is not the King we need concern ourselves with." Doran said. When Oberyn opened his mouth to protest, Doran raised a hand, and with some difficulty Oberyn managed to reign himself in. Doran's fingers were thin and sharp, but his knuckles were an angry color, and swollen. "I do not doubt that this is what the King wishes, for Lord Connington has ever been his servant in everything, more a puppet than councilor. But in this matter it is not the King who should meet reprisals, it is the credibility of his servant. This should be shown as the travesty it is, a mummer's farce intended to discredit a good woman, and it should be done before the eyes of Gods and men. Our sister, princess by birth and queen by right, and her children must be returned to their rightful place. And then can we can approach the problem of the king."

Oberyn smiled, seeing that their intentions did not diverge so much as they had initially appeared to, but Cersei scoffed. "A hollow, ineffectual proposal hardly befitting a prince." She replied, her eyes as green as wildfire. Cersei had Prince Doran's measure. He reminded her of a toy she had possessed as a child, an entertainment for when Jaime was unavailable. The toy had been a trick wooden box, glossy ebony and painted in eye-catching patterns of gold and vermilion, a box which, upon closer inspection, she had found to be sealed shut, with no hinges or seam, never meant to be opened at all. Long after she'd grown too old for toys Tyrion had eventually opened it, having discovered that a sequence of pushing and pulling at the panels could cause it to spring open - she was sure the little imp had cheated somehow - and she had the measure of Prince Doran Nymeros Martell.

Doran raised an eyebrow at that response, but Cersei had no interest in restraining her temper and wouldn't let appeals to propriety move her. If they didn't have the courage to say what needed to be said, than she would and she would shame them all. "Have you forgotten the words of you House? Have you forgotten what they mean?" She made a dismissive gesture. "What is there to consider? Is it that you are afraid? How can that be? Where is the Dorne of the past? Where is proud, defiant Dorne who allied itself to the dragons, but never knelt in subjugation? What is it you take pride in, poets? Music-makers, doctors, scientists? Where are your soldiers? Burn your books! Make warriors of your poets! Let you doctors invent new poisons for our spears, your scientists invent new war machines! And let the Seven Kingdoms shake, and let Princess Elia know that she does not stand alone, that her family and people have not forgotten her! That they love her, and will rise to support her!" She was breathing heavily, a flush upon her cheeks, and Oberyn was staring at her, looking invigorated. "You have a host in the Prince's Pass. Lord Yronwood has another in the Boneway. Have they forgotten how to uses their spears? Have them march to Summerhall, and let him be imprisoned awaiting your pleasure a while."

The prince turned his chair laboriously to face her. Areo Hotah moved to assist, but he waved him away. "That is what your father would do." He conceded. "Perhaps he would be right to do it. Your father has never been afraid to pay a price demanded upon him, it is why he is such a great man. But it is an easy thing for a prince to call the spears." Doran said softly. "An easy thing to make demands, to cry for justice, or vengeance, or anything else. But once it begins, it cannot be put to bed as easily as it is awoken. Would war help Elia? Would it help her children? More likely it would see them hostages, or even see them murdered. A wise prince does not wage war without good cause, not when he cannot hope to win."

Cersei scoffed again, but Cersei, despite her pretensions, knew nothing of battle in any practical sense of the word. Oberyn was not so innocent, and understood what his brother meant. The Dorneish could win wars, at least in Dorne. Their ancestors had excelled in a kind of warfare that didn't suit most Westerosi commanders any more than it suited the style of their armies. The Dorneish never deployed for battle in the traditional way if they could avoid it, cared nothing for the universally accepted tenet that it was better to gamble everything you had on the off chance of winning a decisive battle than to incur the horrific costs of a prolonged war. Because whenever the Northern Kingdoms marched upon them, the Dorneish had already understood that they were already fighting a prolonged war, a war which they had to continue so long as they desired to preserve their identity; as far as they had been concerned, they were engaged in an ongoing struggle for social and cultural independence.

But, because there had never been the money or the men to fight a prolonged war, they had fought a civilian war. They never gave battle if they could avoid it. Instead, they fought by ambush, raid, assassination, and devastation of all enemy property. Never appearing where they were expected, never marching in column, never banding together in any numbers, never identifiable by the wearing of uniforms or carrying of arms. They just—pounced. Out of nowhere. And then vanished without a trace, the desert swallowing them up as if they had never been. And swallowing up anyone sent after them as well.

"Your father and myself are of different temperaments. He has his way, and I have mine." Doran continued. "Elia has been a queen for nearly twenty years. She would not want us to put all of Dorne at risk for her sake. You know that. You cannot just march up to the Red Keep and demand blood. That," a shadow passed over his face "has been tried before. A gentler approach is needed."

"Dorne would not stand alone. I would write to my father, and there are others who would side with us if he did. My father would march his men in and secure the capital as we take his seat, my brother would take ships and take Dragonstone by storm, and then, when he hangs from a gibbet at his own window in Summerhall, for the sport of his own ravens, then once again there would be peace between our houses." She swore.

"It might be so. But it is more likely that The King would write to his friends as we write to ours." Doran replied patiently. "And they would call up their banners as well. And each would have their own grievances in need of address, and settling them all would become impossible, so there would be no more posturing and instead there would be war, and Elia would gain little from it." Cersei bit her lip, but she wasn't satisfied, he could tell. She thought him a coward, a weakling, and she always had. It didn't bother him, of course.

"How would you have it, then, my Prince?" She asked, her voice turning syrupy with false courtesy, a mocking sparkle in her green eyes.

"I would think it obvious. My sister free, and her crown, throne, and the respect she is due returned to her. I would sooner do it without war, but I shall have it so." It would do, for a start.

Cersei's lips twitched, then she curtseyed. She made a point of not agreeing with him. He'd need to have her watched, or else she'd plot something. Doran could counsel patience until it killed him, but Dorne was full of hot tempers not inclined towards restraint, and any poison she whispered would find welcome ears anywhere it went.

"Well, we shall do it your way. But I want to go to the capital. I want to see her." Oberyn insisted.

There was a brief moment of uncertainty, before Doran inclined his head. "If it is what your heart demands, who am I to caution against it? Bring your wife and daughters," Cersei's eyes narrowed "Bring friends. But you will control yourself."

Oberyn opened his mouth, but Doran raised his hand and again Oberyn managed to bite back the comment. "You will control yourself, brother, or else you will not go."

"Then I will control myself."

"You will speak in our sisters defense, and allow none to accuse her without fitting response." Doran's eyes narrowed as he said this, trying to impress the severity of the situation upon him. "Find us friends, if there are any to be found, but remember that friends can be no better than enemies. Take the measure of those who speak against our sister, but see that you do not provoke The King unduly,"

Oberyn laughed. "When have I ever provoked any man… unduly? You would do better to warn The King against provoking me."

Doran sighed, exasperated. A man's enemies should never see his strength, never. If they believed a man to be weak, they don't send hard, killing men to track him down. They don't pay silver to every rumor-monger for news of his whereabouts. They don't put a price on his head. But there was no way to explain this simple truth to Oberyn, so instead he lowered his hand as though the effort had exhausted him.

"And of all the friends to mistrust, keep an eye on the Dowager Queen most of all." Prince Doran said, because that was a warning that Oberyn could understand. "She'll likely try to make use of you, and perhaps you should let her. It may get you what you want. But remember, her day in the sun has past, and she seeks to steal it back at our sister's expense. Such a thing should not be allowed."

\+ + + + +

King's Landing was cold that month. Guardsmen hunched and shivered as they kept watch over the battlements. In the highest rooms, the wind sobbed and whistled as it creased around the stones. The fire in the chamber might as well have been a painting for all the warmth it brought.

"Dragons." He muttered in an exasperated tone, replacing one book with another. Why did that seem to be his families answer to everything?

"What about them?"

"Exactly. What about them?"

Viserys Targaryen had never been called Prince of Dragonstone because Prince Aegon Targryen, most recent to bear the name and unlikely to be the last was born before his fathers coronation and the title passed right to him. He was still Prince of Summerhall, though since his brother had appropriated it for his own seat the title rang hollow. It would be presumptuous to call himself Prince of the City, though the title was used at times and in jest - he doesn't like it, given the titles unfortunate ante-descendants, and he held no position in the Small Council, though he hadn't missed a meeting in years and got more done with a quiet word than they did with a weeks arguments. He was still unmarried at twenty two, although that had almost changed a month ago (but he had no intention of marrying until he was ready, and not to that girl no matter how much King Rhaegar liked her dowry). He always looked somber; now, however, his face looked like nothing so much as an alabaster death-mask, ravaged with lines and crevices and hollows.

An interchangeable array of servants entered with Ser Bronn, recently named Commander of the City Watch, and in an instant the whole room was in motion, food and excellent wine placed upon the table, the fire built back up. A man took the sellswords wet outer garments with a solicitous murmur, another pressed a glass of the excellent wine into his unresisting hand and a third, by some mysterious means, managed to relieve him of his boots. All Prince Viserys servants were like that, comfortable, soft-footed, and kept permanently apologetic by the prince's unpredictable moods, and terrorized in his less than calm moments. The gathered servants effaced themselves, then at the prince's wave of acknowledgment they melted away towards the door, leaving the room cozier than it had been before they worked their efforts, and feeling suddenly empty. Viserys still hadn't looked up.

Ser Bronn was well acquainted with the course the meeting could be expected to take. Viserys had at least one joke for everyone, however for Bronn he had two, a mark of their long association with each other.

Ser Bronn would tolerate whichever of the jokes at his expense the Prince would prod him with, then explain what had happened. And then Viserys would sigh, place his elbows on the table, and say 'surely it won't come to that. Ser Bronn, sound, reliable Ser Bronn, what can I give you to insure that you never mention this to me again?' and he would get it, whatever he asked for, whether it was a knighthood, a purse full of gold, a position that allowed him to enrich himself or a castle a little up the coast that he quite liked the look of. 'Find a way, just do it' he would instruct when Bronn brought up whatever it would take, and the problem brought to Viserys' attention wouldn't be a problem after all.

Bronn would see to that.

Bronn had the leisure to think about this because Prince Viserys was staring down at the book in his lap, that he'd most likely spent the whole day perusing. On a whim, Bronn decided he didn't feel like following the script tonight.

"Why do you spend so much time reading history?" He asked, with what he managed to make sound like genuine curiosity.

"Because all the answers to the questions of today can be found in the books of the past. All the problems of today are the problems of the past attached to new people. Who knows, perhaps there is something in here about what to do about the trouble you've caused on your way here? A Septa is with child, perhaps, yelling about outrage? A riot in Fleabottom, after you thought to set fire to the the markets on a whim? Or perhaps something priceless stollen?"

"No sir, been too busy to do any of that probably." Ser Bronn replied, going along with the first of the two jokes Prince Viserys had about him - that he roamed about the countryside committing senseless atrocities and charging them to Prince Viserys to account for. In the weighing of it, probably objectively the better of the two jokes as well, although he hadn’t been amused by it in a long time. Ser Bronn was reasonably sure Viserys must have had other jokes, for other people, but he never heard them. "Your intended, she's off with the northern boy. Nobody could expect you to marry her now."

"I know."

"Makes a break from what you usually ask me to do, but I enjoyed it. Man doesn't like to feel like he's getting caught in a rut."

As far as it counted for anything, Bronn liked Viserys just fine. The young man didn't have any qualities he particularly admired, despite being composed most of the time he was arrogant, vain, dissolute and possessed of vacillations of temper. But he paid, fairly and without stinting, and that was the only quality Bronn really looked for in another person, so he was more than happy to excuse the rest.

"It's good to see that accomplished, isn't it?." Viserys agreed, and sighed. "Unfortunately, it can't all be young love. The king sent a letter to me. It arrived only an hour or so before you did."

"What did he want?"

"Pity. And at such an hour. Still, I was solicitous and hopefully I gave him what he wanted, relieved some of the weight on his poor shoulders. I love my brother. Seven know it, I love him. But sometimes my abilities of commiseration get - " He trailed off, raised his glass of the wine, but didn't drink it, just stared into it as though trying to discern something in the thick liquid. "Strained, I suppose. Exhausted. Perhaps you're empathy can stretch where mine fails?"

"Never been much for empathy. Doesn’t seem much point to it really."

"No, but you're the most selfish man I know, and that might do in a pinch." He must be very annoyed. That almost sounded like a jab at his older brother. "Picture to yourself, Bronn, but not as you are now. Instead, imagine yourself like this; You a man who shall be forty in just a few months, renowned for your looks and gallantry, the subject of a dozen romantic songs. You are in good health and hearty appetite, your bowels open every day without causing you any reason for distress, your joints are supple, your bones support you, and if that wasn't enough blessings to count in addition you are King of all Westeros, and some of Essos as well."

"I admit, that doesn't sound too bad to me." Bronn replied. He was ten years younger than that, he was thin and he was not tall. His hair was dark, his shadow of a beard was dark, and he had small dark eyes. He looked as if he could knock you down, and might decide to do it too, his manner was swaggering and self-assured. His right shoulder ached on most days and one of his legs had been badly gashed years before, so that the muscle never healed properly. He limped in winter and was grateful to the fire that kept the fingers of pain at bay. No, it didn't sound bad to him at all. "If that's an offer…"

"No, there aren't enough throats to cut in the world for that to be on the table." Viserys said, and wished it were true. If there was one benefit to reading so much history, it was realizing that. A king like this man probably wouldn't sound too bad to Westeros any more than it did to him, if only He were possessed of the right blood. People wanted a king to be like his brother, someone superficially heroic and laudable who wouldn't interfere with their lives overmuch, or when he did blame it on someone else they didn't like anyway. And wasn't that ironic? Another thing all his reading had convinced him, that when the long tally was added, it could be said that the Seven Kingdoms all owed far more to the vices and mediocrity of his namesake, Viserys the first, than it did to the labors of more virtuous sovereigns.

"The problem is, the king doesn't see it that way. He is uneasy, wracked with troubles and burdens. Now, he has a dutiful son, and an exquisite daughter. I don't posses either of those things, but I imagine you might well have a few, running around the Blackwater or wherever it is you came from?"

"Might do." Bronn conceded, not sounding invested in the prospect in the least. It was the sort of thing nobles did, imagine what it was like to be each other, or someone else. You just had to tolerate it. And yet they could never imagine what it was to come from nothing, to know oneself to be disposable, to realise unless one is constantly the cynosure, one can be tossed away. A nothing.

"There you go then. Like I said, I haven't got a son, the timing isn't right. But the king does, and you have probably beget an entire tribe by now. The man who sweeps my hearth and makes my bed, his friend that cooks my meals, both have a son." Viserys had a personal household of nearly six hundred, but he knew all his servants. "They are scarcely alone in this state of grace, most of the beggars on the street and the farmers in the fields have got one, or someone to carry their name at least if they happen to be fortunate enough to possess one, and the High Septon probably has a son as well, I'm sure he's found the time by now to take care of that. So all is right with the world?"

"Sounds like it. Except you don't ask for me when all is right in the world. It sounds a lot like you're asking me to kill the prince." Bronn said slowly. His tone was hard, not because he objected on any point of principle, but because he understood that success would be just as fatal as failure.

"Don't even think treason around me, it's contagious and I have enough problems." Viserys replied with a snarl. "You think you're safe to say the like of that here? The listeners are supposed to be my men, but the Spider can get a hold on anyone, trust me on that. Don't let them hear anything you mind repeating." He grumbled. "No, the problem is not the prince. My brother, Rhaegar, is already possessed of a son, and a daughter, but that, he feels, is not enough. An heir and a spare, as it goes. What is to be done about it?"

"I don't think the king needs me to tell him what to do about it. Like you said, he has a wife, and has a son and daughter already."

Viserys' sense of humor was somewhat atrophied, most likely from never varying his jokes. He blinked, slowly, then continued as though Bronn hadn't said anything. "Another child will kill the queen, that is without question. Even we’re it not so, she is forty. Past the age to be having children. And whose fault is that?"

Ser Bronn was too practical to be overly concerned with matters of fault, after the fact, anyway. But he gave it a try, in order to indulge Viserys. "The Seven Gods?"

"No, try again."

"The King?"

Viserys was Rhaegar's brother, and though he might get frustrated with his brother, you could never draw a single word from him that was disloyal. "Didn't I just warn you about treason? Do you want me to hurt you, Bronn? I will do it, you know. You can fight when it's worth your while, but you are not the only one. That’s why this falls to me to take care of things, like it always does. That’s why I’ll be the one who finds the right spot for the knife and sticks it in." Viserys face was flushed, he was breathing heavily. With a deep breath, he ran his fingers through his hair, and reasserted his composure. If the prince got into full flow, he could mix insults and compliments in a great torrent of bitter vitriol. There were times when Bronn suspected that Vieserys temper was a finely honed instrument that he used with careful deliberation, but more often he thought that Viserys was completely at it's mercy, and while winding him up was alright for a laugh, pushing him too hard was a very bad idea.

So he raised his hands, and lowered his head. "Must be the queens, then."

"How perceptive you are." The charges were ridiculous, of course. As if a queen could ever vanish for long enough to commit adultery, or at least any adultery worth committing. Her disappearance would cause panic in the palace. And even ignoring that, servants were always underfoot, eyes were always watching, and not all of them were friendly. Everybody knew that everything that occurred was valuable to someone. He knew that first hand - a virgins maidenhead was just as important as a wife's fidelity. Even with Maegor the Cruel having gotten it into his head somehow to build all those secret-passageways…

"So is it a problem with the queen, or is the queen the problem?" Viserys continued, in a sharp, clipped voice. "Lord Jon Connington says it's the latter. And old Jon could get my brother to say yes to anything. Trouble is, so can anyone else. Someone else got the bright idea of getting His Holiness involved, now the whole realm is probably gossiping about this state of affairs. And of course it's me who has to find a way to get them all agreeing on things again."

"And how will you do that?" He made an acceptable commander of Goldcloaks, though he tended to flail a little when a problem suggested itself that couldn't be answered by stabbing it or bribing it.

"This is my intention. My brother King Rhaegar shall embark upon a Royal Progress, visiting each of his domains before returning to King's Landing, and means to embark within the next fortnight. After his tournament. When he arrives, I intend to convene a Small Council and approach him about the matter directly. Rhaegar hates - as do we all - appearing in the wrong, but that is where I must put him. Perhaps he will make a decision, or perhaps the marriage can be annulled on some pretext - that's where you come in, Ser Bronn - and I will marry him smartly to a suitable young lady who can provide what he lacks."

Needless to say, Viserys was not living in a single reality, but two or three or more, a shifting shadow world of diplomatic possibilities. While he was doing his best to keep his brother married to Elia (whether she liked it or not, or so it seemed to Ser Bronn), and maintain the backing of The Crown's most important alliance by urging The King to remember his obligation and affection for his family, he had no choice but to also plan for a less happy world, in which The King's obligations and scruples are weighed and found wanting, and his marriage to Elia is nearly twenty years spent in an unlawful manner, living in sin with a woman not his wife who ensnared the realm under false pretenses (whatever those might be). In which case those years are wiped from the page, and the balance readjusted to a king in need of a bride. He will marry some suitable woman of fertile stock, once one of suitable age and beauty was found (Rhaegar was very vain, beauty was an important consideration), and doubtless Viserys already had a list. All outcomes were likely, but that uncertainty didn't matter, because all outcomes could, in their own way, be made desirable.

With a bit of work.

They sit and think for a bit. 'It's sad', thinks Viserys, 'but it has to be done. And surely it's better than what Rhaegar has done to her. What he will do to her. Better for them both to have a clean break'.

'You make it sound so simple', thinks Ser Bronn, 'all fixed in a course, like a ball in a groove, but you're expecting somebody to upset it, or else I wouldn't be here. Someone needs to vanish to make things go the way you want them to go, and you think I'm the man to see it done, but you won't say it outright. Not until you know for sure - your brother isn’t the only one afraid of what he is going to need to do. Until then I’m just supposed to hear you out, to be your conscience, and what a laugh that is.'

"What will happen to the queen?" Bronn asked, feeling uncharacteristically idly curious. It wasn't like him, but he had been involved in this matter so long that he was beginning to get invested in spite of himself.

"If cooler heads prevail, she'll revert to her former title and return home, and I'll repay her dowry, all of her dowry down to the silver plate, even if I have to do it from my own pocket. Her children will return with her, legitimized Martells with no shred of dishonor attached to their names, and our king will marry again." Viserys replied. "Or perhaps she'll be sent to a covenant and become a silent sister. Or else, accusations will continue to mount, eventually evidence will be found that is irrefutable, or sufficiently so to satisfy, and she will be burned alive, that being the just desserts of an adulterous wife, and our king will marry again." (perhaps the youngest Stark daughter, Rhaegar had a weakness for northern girls, and Sansa Stark was said to be delightful). "She has been accused now for almost a year. Yes, Ser Arthur Dayne happens to be stronger than others, and always stands for the Queen. This does not mean that the Queen is always in the right, you understand, but it does mean that nobody can gainsay her without answering with their bodies against his sword. But a way past that obstacle can be found, make no mistake."

Bronn sighed, drumming his fingers on the table by the chair. "I don't understand you. I really don't. As though this is hard, somehow. She's in poor health, another child will kill her? Well there you go. All the king needs do is just fuck her, let the brat she pops out kill her for him, and he can marry again."

Viserys gave him a look of pure disgust.

"That not to your liking? He's got a boy and a girl on her, must not have had a problem swivving her once. Still, there are other ways. A toadstool will get rid of an inconvenient wife, and will work on her the same way it works on anyone else, even if she is a queen. Toadstool in mushroom soup."

"Death is easy enough to arrange." Viserys growled, getting to his feet. "Any thug can deliver death. What The King desires is her, out of the way, without compromising himself or his laws. We cannot have the death of his queen on his conscience."

"Well, he's just going to have to get used to the idea. Because I certainly don't see anyone finding him a way out of this."

"Don't be too sure of that." The fire had burned down to just a single, smoldering log, and Viserys started into it for a moment, as the room grew colder. "A way can always be found."

"But it is better to plan for the worst. What I need is a list, a list with six names on it. The first of those names I shall give you now; Ser Arthur Dayne, of the Kingsguard. Legally he cannot champion her cause if he's inculpate himself." Arthur Dayne was one of Rhaegars closest friends and confidants, but friendship, obligations, debts, none of those things ever counted for much when it stood between Rhaegar and whatever he wanted. "As for the others, I care not their providence. Six men with access to the Queen."

He turned to look at Bronn as the fire died. "Find me six names of guilty men."


	6. Lyanna, Viserys, Margaery

Thirty horses had to be walked out one by one form the stalls in the foetid hold, Rusher among them. It took time, and as she waited, Lyanna leaned on her husband and tried to acclimatize her legs to dry land after so long at sea. Her legs kept compensating for the gentle rocking that wasn't happening anymore, and she kept stumbling. Lyanna was only graceful ahorse, even dancing (which she loved) she was more enthusiastic than skilled.

The chest with the majority of their clothing had been loaded onto the wrong ship (another indication of the rushed planning at work) so Lyanna and Robert were dressed in hunting clothes – him in a quilted black pourpoint in deerskin and boots that went all the way to his hip and buckled on the sides – and his wife wore the woman’s equivalent: a neat coat that she rendered feminine and long skirts (with trousers underneath, so as not to scandalize the world too much when she rode). She wore a sword; he wore a long knife and carried a coiled whip in his hands.

Gulltown had been a settlement long before the Andals had ever come to Westeros, but it's calm waters and sheltered bay had made it an excellent staging point for their ships. The quays themselves were of dressed stone and iron blocks, but the walkways were of planking, stretching away to the warehouses and taverns along the front, all crushed together with never enough space.

The port was noisy and stank strongly, though after her experiences at sea she certainly wasn't complaining. A dozen ships rocked at anchor outside the sheltered waters, all waiting for the harbormasters skiff to row across, the captains shouting insults at one another. No one could enter Gulltown without permission, not without risking the catapults pointed out to sea to smashing them to flinders. Gulls called in high voices overhead, swooping down to squabble over any smear of scale or fish guts.

On the eight long quays, merchant crews were heaving bales and barrels out of their holds as fast as they could, doing their best to distract and confound the assessors and port tallyman who tried to keep track of taxes owed and the bewildering array of documentation, forged or real. Fishing boats bobbed in between and around them, the boatmasters holding up good examples of their catch.

Gulltown was worth thousands a year to the Vale and almost as much to the crown, in taxes and profits both. Lyanna watched a wooden crate of oranges being yanked open, her eyes drawn to the splash of color on the whitened wooden docks. A merchant peering at them suddenly speared his thumb deep into the core of one, then licked the juicy pulp, nodding. It didn't take the Starks to tell that Winter was coming, and oranges and lemons would increase in value accordingly, be worth a tidy profit. Gulltown was where fortunes were made, for those who had the eye to see it.

Lyanna liked oranges, she'd never even tasted one until she found herself south of the Riverlands, but she adored their sweet tangy taste, enough to wander over, take one out of the crate herself, and peel it, eating the sections one at a time, then licking the juice off her fingers. The merchant watched her blatant act of theft with incredulity, but given the number of armed men at her back decided better then to press her for recompense.

Jon and Edric were both taking in the sights, curious at the new experience offered. Edric in particular was breathing deeply. The younger of the boys had somehow gotten to like ships and the sea, and had even come to take pleasure in the lash of spray and white-crested waves, unlike his mother. Everywhere they looked were beggars and shopkeepers as well as hundreds of gruff sailors, bustling to and fro with their sea chests and cargoes. Beyond that was a narrow street of three-story houses with overhanging eaves, full of shops with stalls set out in front, the traders sitting on their wooden blocks calling their wares. Gulltown was a stepping stone across the Narrow Sea to the continent. It was a poor place to land if your destination was King's Landing, but the majority of goods that would make their way to The North, The Riverlands or the Vale began their journeys here.

There was a crowd gathering around them, gawping in exactly the same manner, as the rest of the fleet pulled in. As more than a dozen brightly painted warships, shields hanging over the gunwales of the galleys, banners and pennons flying from the mastheads made their way into the harbor, oarsmen rowing to the beat of the drums. Even Lyanna, watching the proceedings out of one eye and the oranges with the other, conceded that boats were a lot more endurable from this angle. Trumpets were blaring and horns were blasting. The sun glittered off metallic hauberks and helmets, the turquoise waters of the harbor churning with frothy waves, and the harbor master looked to be regretting that Gulltown was a deepwater port, with ships able to dock at the harbors as he saw the soldiers form up in ranks upon the decks, threatened or bullied into attention by the officers or knights.

"Make sure the lads understand that if they cause more trouble than is fair, they can take it up with me." Robert was telling Ser Roland Storm, who only bared his teeth and shook his head. That, he assured his lord, would not be necessary, any man who crossed him would be strung even if the hypothetical man happened to be his brother - 'for discipline, ought to be used'. It was not as reassuring as he intended it to be.

"Shouldn't we stay with the army?" Jon asked, a little awed by the spectacle himself, as once again he was impressed with the scale of the undertaking. Robert heard him, but it was Ser Andrew Estermont who replied, shaking his head. Ser Estermont was five years older than Jon was, which didn't seem such a gap as it once had, and nearly as tall as his father. His face would have been plain, but for the clutter of features, the dark beard a little patchy across the cheeks, and of course his thick, distinguished eyebrows, hairily alive that never failed to indicate what he was thinking. Jon had always liked him, he was a man who was kind when he didn't have to be, and on thought that was a very under-rated quality. Lyanna liked him as well - too many Stormlanders were braggarts, and truthfully she thought less of them for it, but Ser Estermont was quite the contrary.

"Don't worry, we'll march them through the city. There's a meadow about a mile west of here where they can set up camp. We'll have them marching and doing drills, and they can take turns in the city, a division at a time. This many men all at once would cause a riot." He scratched the back of his neck ruefully. "To tell it true, even in shifts there will be havoc, and they'll drink the city dry in a week, but that's not to be helped. Soldiers act out."  He was leading two saddled warhorses, a great deal of kit, and a small train of servants.

Jon wandered over to Robert, who was done instructing his men, and noticing Jon approach he reached over and patted him affectionately on the back. Robert was a very tactile sort of man. "Alright, Jon?"

"I think so." Jon replied automatically, but before he could decide if he meant it or not Robert had moved on. He turned, to see Lyanna watching him unblinkingly, and met her gaze but didn't hold it. Steffon had taken Jon's place with Ser Estermont, asking him excitedly about 'Far Country', which Estermont had seen plenty of since he was usually in their uncle Stannis' service, and Ser Estermont was slowly answering.

Once the last of the horses were unloaded and saddled, two dozen of Robert's men formed into a neat phalanx of armor and horseflesh to pass through the port. Robert waved an arm and turned his mount away from the sea, heading along to the walls that enclosed everything in the fortress town. The walls loomed over everyone alive inside, a constant reminder of the long and bloody wars that had been fought to control this place, walls thirty feet high and wide enough for a troop of soldiers to march six abreast along their length. Each corner of the wall was further fortified into a fortress itself, containing it’s own barracks, armory and storerooms. Gulltown was it's own little world, with alleys and shops and smiths and thieves and and women fallen upon hard times whose husbands had died of disease or been drowned, and a high old crenellated wall over which an enormous tower was visible. Soldiers patrolled the top of the wall, wearing iron helmets and white tunics, all of whom were giving the party worried looks.

As Lyanna felt her horse stretch out into a canter, she let out a wild yell and darted through the knights to let the animal have it's head - after being confined and blinkered in the stinking hold she felt Rusher had earned it. Horses suffered terribly in ships, at least as terribly as she did, growing sicker and sicker but unable to empty their stomachs, and it did them good to have a bit of run. Everyone else must have had the same idea, because the road ahead cleared quickly as they thundered along it, tearing down good paved roads at a reckless speed. Edric whooped as he came abreast of her, he'd be as good on a horse as she was, she was convinced. But the mount played a part as well, Rusher's ears flicked disdainfully and he eased into a gallop, and she let him, caught up in the pleasure of the speed and danger. She found she was laughing as she rode, and let out another yell, something akin to a battlecry, caught up in the pleasure of speed and danger. She'd been confined for too long as well, but this was an adventure, or at least the beginning of one, and it was pleasant to go racing towards it, rather then wait for it to come to her. Pleasant to leave it all behind her, in all senses.

A fall on the stone cobbles might well kill them, but the air away from the docks was cold and sweat, and didn't remind her of boats, and filled with all the delights of autumn. It was true that she would arrive with dust and sweat and grime clinging to every inch of her, but she would feel refreshed even so.

She only eased off when she came to the barbican. A crop of heads were fixed to spikes above the gate. It was in ruinous state, the white walls covered in lichen and a great crack running down the middle. Ahead two towers flanked a gate where an ancient drawbridge crossed the moat. Easing off to let her husband, her sons and her escort catch up, she sighed, feeling like herself for the first time in a fortnight. Rusher strutted, prancing around the other horses almost daintily, and she laughed and patted his neck. Rusher wasn't even breathing hard.

The escort made an impressive sight, clad in mail, the sun reflecting off the metal links of their hauberks, Edric in the lead on a snorting grey stallion having outpaced the other riders. If he kept improving at such a rate, he'd beat her one of these days. They slowed their horses and were trotting by the time they reached her, Robert shaking his head and laughing at the display, his own big midnight horse, several hands higher than his fellows champing at the bridle. His saddle was scarlet and his horse wore a hood of the same that drew the eye to it's dark wild gaze.

"This whole city is nothing but walls and gates." She said to him, and Robert shrugged, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"The city grows, overflows it's borders. Nothing for it but to build another wall."

"But why leave the old ones still up?" She was sure there was a good answer, but it didn't seem to suggest itself as far as she could see.

Edric, with a boys knack for finding something to draw his attention, pointed up at the heads that had been spiked upon the wall. "Mountain Clansmen?"

"More likely to be dishonest merchants." Jon replied, and Edric looked disappointed at such a prosaic and commonplace answer. Robert adored his children when they were not actually in his presence, finding the idea of them somehow more of a joy than the reality of their constant demands on his attention, which was one of the reasons he was so keen to foster them away - he loved them best in their absence. Still, he'd told them all stories of his boyhood in the Vale, stories about wild men with beards wearing bones who crept through the night, stories about a holy man who lived alone on the mountains with no company but the wind and the rain and his club, or 'shillelagh', and sometimes when he was in an imaginative mood he invented stories about ghostly battles and sleeping kings buried under the earth.

"How about that?" Edric was pointing to something dangling from the high keep. A white skeleton wrapped in heavy chains, dangling over the parapets.

"Whoever he is, he's been there a while, the bones are picked right clean." Robert said, scratching his jaw. He was frowning. Where it came to justice, Robert inclined more to outright murder than to cruel confinement or torture. "Nasty way to die." He added.

Another pair of towers flanked the opposite gateway, these ones without any display of corpses. There was a clatter of steps as the lord pushed open the door and made haste down the stairs to greet them. Lord Grafton turned out to be a short man, half a head shorter than Lord Robert Baratheon but powerfully built and fit, who bowed so deeply she halfway feared he'd never be able to rise again. He was dressed in red brocade with a heavy gold pendant chain around his neck. His wife was with him, likewise in red, a strikingly handsome woman with all the dignity and assurance her husband did not possess, with the lithe slimness of early youth and direct dark grey eyes that a woman at forty-four had no right to.

A slender youth with lanky fair hair and secretive pale eyes was standing with him, one of the Arryn brood, though Robert had trouble keeping track, and she didn't bother at all. It was enough to know the important houses of her homeland and her new home.

"Lord Grafton. Lady Grafton." Robert greeted them, as though their behavior was perfectly natural and unworthy of comment, rather than a display of madly exuberant high-spirits. Swinging from the saddle smoothly as though he didn't feel his years or weight, her husband tossed the reins to one of his men and strode towards the gathered men, who had obviously been expecting to greet him in a more dignified fashion and couldn't help be taken aback. One or two of the men with him looked as though they were expecting Robert to make a declaration of war any minute.

Jon dismounted as well. Dark, intense, of slight build, he bore little resemblance to his genial giant of a father, and Edric did so himself a moment later, who wasn't sure if he was supposed to or not, and decided to lean on the side of caution. Lyanna had not dismounted. Curbing her restive stallion with a practiced hand, she stirred impatiently, feeling flushed from the burst of exertion and mostly recovered from her sea-sickness. At their back, the thirty men in armor kept their talk small. The knights had all taken the time to put on their three-quarter plate harness before disembarking, and looked very impressive, most in plain steel but a few wearing armor overlaid with lacquers of midnight blue and dusky gold and deep carnelian and surcoats and flowing cloaks of every color of the spectrum. They set upon great chargers, with barding that matched their riders. They wore plumed helmets and had long, heavy broadswords strapped to their belts. Ser Gerald Gower, a blond-haired bull of a man glowered at Lord Grafton's son so fiercely the man was compelled to look away. Ser Gower was taciturn and dour, preferring his own company or the company of Aster, his horse. Ser Gower found people a burden, they thought and did strange things, acted in peculiar ways, and more often than not let you down. Lyanna thought it likely that her oldest son could relate to this view.

"An honor to welcome you, my lord." Lord Grafton muttered, looking a little overwhelmed. He took the hand cautiously, anticipating the crushing grip, but judging by his expression as they shook hands he under-estimated it.

"These are my lads. Jon, and Edric." Robert added, waving them over. Jon inclined his head, as did Edric, and Lord Grafton inclined his head as well. "And of course my wife." Lyanna didn't acknowledge her husband or the man he was introducing her to, she had risen up in her stirrups, and was much concerned with gazing down High Street, toward the rising stone walls of the outer castle bailey.

"Pleasure to meet you as well." Lord Grafton added, after a moment's hesitation.

"Well," Robert said, clapping his hands together, never one to stand on ceremony. "No sense in dickering out here like a man with a whore on a cold night," he bowed to Lady Grafton "begging your pardon, my lady. I'm for The Gates of the Moon. Lord Fell has command of my men, so thrash out with him how many you'll allow through your gates at a time. Jon gave me use of the meadow for my men, so that's where they'll be." And plenty of the city would be on them like flies, whores and knife-sharpeners, farriers and con-men selling bones of holy men and the usual riff-raff an army accumulated.

Lord Grafton blinked, then nodded, his arms slightly bent as they hung at his sides.  Obviously he had expected an imposition on his hospitality as they took the opportunity to freshen up and eat, perhaps followed by some negotiation. Still, he adapted as best he could. "Lord Jon Arryn has invited you, and you are welcome, but Gulltown is my charge. This is a city of laws. Laws your men will be obliged to obey."

"They're soldiers heading away to war, they'll act up a little." Robert replied, as though expecting otherwise was absurd. Which, to be fair, it was. "But they've got men with good heads on their shoulders who understand what the limits are. Don't worry about that account." He patted the man's shoulder. "Like I said, pleasure to meet you. Open the gates, if you will. We've got a long way to go yet." Again Lord Grafton looked surprised, though in truth he looked happy to be rid of Robert.

It was a pleasant day for riding. They soon left the port, city and ocean far behind, and Lyanna drew in a stunned breath at the long curve of green valley before her. But it was only the start, every turn of the path or rise of a hill, or edge of the forest unrolled new vistas, each one seeing vaster than before. What country! Everywhere she looked was green spaces and soft lakes and rolling mountains breaking up the horizon. Edric was looking about for signs of adventure or enchantment, but there wasn't much of that, just sheep and pigs and workers in the fields - though they did seem to be whistling more merrily than most.

They spared their horses, moving at a steady trot along the road that wound it's way around the mountains. On lesser mounts, they might have exchanged them at the post-houses on the hundred and sixty miles of highway, but there was no need - they had time. The roads in the Vale were paved with good stone, and kept likewise in good repair. Merchants thronged their length, but dragged their carts and families sharply off the road when they saw the Stormlanders flying past.

They were stopped twice by patrols, each time sent on their way in all haste when the men realized who it was they were stopping. The Men-at-arms became remarkably polite and helpful after that, recommending the best places to rest on their route to the Bloody Gate. They found a likely looking tavern by sunset, and if most of them had to sleep among the horses in the stables, or wedged under the eaves of an attic, it was not such a hardship. It was certainly better than boats, Lyanna thought to herself with satisfaction.

She held her horse on a short reign. She would have liked to go racing off down the road, but they had a long way to go yet. Around midday they stopped, twenty miles from Gulltown.

The sign of The Hooded Hawk was an old inn built on the ruins of something else, and looked like a fortress, it had it's own curtain wall, and a tower in the north eastern corner. Built against the tower was a massive building of white plaster and heavy black beams, with a hipped thatch roof and expensive lead shielding around the four chimneys, glass windows opened onto the porches that ran all along the front and sunlit side. Lyanna whistled. Many minor lords lived more rudely, it was at least a the size of most Holdfasts, and probably worth - she tried to do the mathematics in her head - wished for a maester - then finally arrived at a figure that had to be egregiously wrong.

The innkeeper was obviously as prosperous as his property suggested, for all that he was a big bald man in an apron, and as they arrived he swept off his hat and bowed to the ground as the party dismounted, the inn's grooms taking their horses since their squires were all likely still waiting to disembark and be marched through Of course, forty men do not just dismount and hand over their horses at an inn. Even an inn that is so impressive as this one, surrounding a courtyard that wouldn't disgrace a great lords seat. The courtyard featured a horse fountain and a small garden behind a low wall, with an iron wrought gate that was gilded and painted. The inn's doors were painted a beautiful red. The master of the inn came out as soon as his gate was opened. "Edgard, milord. I wouldn't exactly call my inn humble - it's the best one on the highway. But I do like to see knights." The staff descended on the party like an ambush of friendship, carrying trays of leather tankards and soft bread and sharp cheese.

The stormlanders filled the courtyard. Horses moved and grunted, but nobody moved or allowed the servants to approach them before Robert turned in his saddle. "At ease, lads. Come and eat and drink your fill. This is a good house, and anyone does anything to change its name then they'll have me to answer to." There was a chorus of grunts and steel-clad nods, and the men got to work with brisk efficiency. By the time the rearmost knight was dismounted and had been served his welcome cup and bread, Lyanna, her children and husband were sitting in a room as fine as the rest of the inn. Lyanna would have guessed that the tavern was normally sparsely populated, though today the locals were out in force. A number of hard-bitten men sat in huddled corners nursing their dark beer and casting furtive glances their way.

The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end and a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran back and forth with skewers of meat while the plump innkeeper drew beer from the kegs. The beer was peaty and flavorsome, but it was too strong for Lyanna's tastes (her husband, of course, would drink anything you put in front of him, and Jon was growing to be the same). The locals seemed to like it though, and she watched the tavern's patrons as they drank and argued. They were a motley bunch, and none looked like they'd worked in a while, though that hadn't stopped them coming in here to spend their coin.

She pushed away from the table to make room for her legs and sat back, tipping her chair against the wall and getting properly comfortable. She was tired and dusty, and it felt wonderful. This, she was convinced, was the life.

 

\+ + + + +

 

The first feast of Autumn, celebrating what might be the last harvest until spring, was always a magnificent one, and King Rhaegar seemingly intended to outdo even the festivals of his coronation. Yet there was a touch of desperation to the celebration - Westeros had found itself with two queens, and both were conspicuous in their absence. In their place was his sister, their sister, little Daenerys, who was to be betrothed, and all a manner of great lords were eager to press their suit.

Daenerys was his sister, but when he looked at her he saw not her delicate little heart-shaped face as pale and exquisitely drawn as white lace, or her fragile frame flowering into beauty, but something spoiled and artificial – a precocious pet who would be better confined to the schoolroom rather than reveling in all the eyes on her. He disliked her on principle - Daenerys was, by nature, inclined to be kind but foolish, Viserys, by nature, inclined to impatience and cruelty. He'd schooled those impulses, but she hadn't learned to restrain her own.

The festivities were to last for fourteen days, every day a new theme and a new masque. Every dinner there were new songs, or actors or jugglers or players of one sort or another. There was a bear-baiting, and hunting in the Kingswood, there was a mock sea battle in one of the courtyards, flooded for the occasion, recitals of poetry as well as jousting, and another night a dance of torches in the woods.

All the rooms in Summerhall shone with the brilliant light of the very best candles, and at the far end of the room there were musicians, and the ladies danced a circle dance where they held hands and formed lines, and looked about and smiled at their favorite courtiers who lounged against the walls and inspected the ladies as if they were high-bred hunters, trotting out.

It was all a masque - a performance rich in symbols as well as an act of celebrating the summer that had passed. There was no way to attend without admiring the beauty of the court and the Royal Family, how kingly is Rhaegar, first of his name and how reverent the little prince, and how enchanting and queenly is his daughter and sister. There were times when he felt as though his family were more like actors than real kings and princes, so poised and beautiful and conscious of their selves and their place in the procession or the dance.

But he's not thinking about her. He is not watching her slender neck and her dark hair as she laughs at something her latest suitor whispers in her ear. He was certainly not giving much thought about Lord Willis Tyrell the suitor in question, a handsome man in the manner of the Tyrells (up-jumped stewards, who could only claim descent to the Gardeners from the female line, and the wrong side of the sheets at that), though he did spare enough thought to notice that there was something soft in his looks, something that bespoke the decadence of his land and of his people. In Viserys view, Lord Willas Tyrell had none of the attributes of a Lord Paramount, not true courage, not the art of disassembling, not the inner strength to bear the hatred of others, not the honor of his word. He had only vanity, wrath and jealousy, the qualities of a courtier. And ambition, like all his family. He was accompanied by his friends Ser Francis Lovell and Ser Robert Brackenbury, both far better knights than he.

And she was not looking at Ser Willis either. Not really. Her eyes met his across the room, and he flushed, feeling himself stir despite himself. Once he'd been told a story of a courtesan who could finish a man with just her eyes, and in that moment it didn't seem so unlikely. Desire for her burned in him like a fever. There were times he feared the power she had over him, but few enough. Mostly, he worshiped her. Perhaps they could sneak away tonight, find a few hours in each others arms…

He managed to tear his attention away. There wasn't time for fantasies, not tonight. The visit to Summerhall had compacted the court's quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small place within the estates walls. He found his nephew in the garden, surrounded by torches burning in wall brackets. Crown Prince Aegon Targaryen was dressed in the simplest of clothes, just plain dark wool and blunt leather shoes like any townsman. He wore no gold and, with the look of a boy, he might have been an apprentice in some trade that did not require too much strength, if not for his silver-white hair, so like Viserys' own but worn short, and his violet eyes. He was discussing his sins with Most Devout Maynard, doubtless astounding the pompous old windbag with his learning in the process. Ever since the High Septon had made his displeasure felt, King Rhaegar had made a point of turning exclusively to Septon Maynard for spiritual guidance. The man was far too spineless - or maybe too overwhelmed at the thought of royal favor - to hold the king accountable for anything or deny him anything. Still, Viserys supposed that made for a clean conscience, and wasn't that the function of a priest? He just hoped The King didn't get it into himself to make the useless imbecile the next High Septon.

Most Devout Maynard was dressed impressively, but he was almost stone deaf, and had been so afflicted since he was eighty-five or so. Worse, since then his speech impediment had gotten steadily worse, lisping and slurring his way through conversation. Unless you paid strict attention to his title and the institution her represented, it was very hard to take him even a little seriously. Prince Viserys, however, barely listened to the prattling, it had been months since he saw his nephew now that his brother was keeping him in Summerhall rather than at court, and as always he searched the young man’s face for some trace of either his father, or perhaps Viserys' father, but there was nothing of either of them. Aegon's eyes were guileless and his frame was slender, showing no sign of the strength so many of his bloodline were renowned for, none of the craftiness or guile. Madness, however…

Viserys almost missed the bandages on Aegon's hands. His gaze snagged on them and Aegon held them up into the light, his face flushing.

"Sword practice, Uncle. Old Ser Darry says they’ll harden, but they just bleed and bleed. I thought for a while…" Aegon caught himself, raising one bound finger, than shrugged.

"Mine never did." Viserys admitted, showing his own, relatively soft palms. The palms of a clerk, Lord Jon Connington was known to disparagingly say when they disagreed, though Viserys had at least managed to learn the basics of swordsmanship, and he was young - one day he might well be more than merely adequate. Connington, meanwhile, did not see why a noble should write letters when there were clerks for that, and would never improve as long as he lived. He wondered if Aegon was talking about the Red Keep's old Master-at-Arms or Ser Jonotar of the Kingsguard. He supposed he would have to have a word with both of them.

As he examined his nephew, Viserys surprised himself with a surge of affection for the young prince. He had watched little Prince Aegon grow with the hopes of an entire country on his shoulders. And he had seen those hopes falter and then crumble into disappointment. He could only guess how hard it had been for the boy himself. Aegon was not stupid, for all his strangeness, not in the least. He would have heard every barbed comment made about him over the years, but he persevered.

But Viserys had read his history. He knew that perseverance in the face of helplessness was not a quality that made for a good king. He accepted a cup of wine from a page, absent-mindedly ruffling the child's blond curls, still looking at his nephew thoughtfully, as Prince Aegon inquired in all innocence whether all sins might be shriven. As though the boy had ever had the chance to do anything that needed forgiving.

Viserys knew that he himself certainly looked the part of a prince, with a gleaming head of silver hair, clad in a tawny velvet doublet with sleeves slashed and reversed in black satin, and wearing with pride on a chain around his neck the jeweled proof that he was numbered among a most privileged elite. Rings flashed on his hands. He was wearing the sigil of his princely house, rather than his personal coat of arms.

"My prince. And yourself as well, your highness." Came a voice as three big men left the garden. High, but manly, and controlled, elegant. A voice that should have gone to a trobounder or bard, it would be wasted on anyone else. There seemed to be nothing about Ser Baelor that a man could find fault with, and Viserys always felt that he might be a bit too much of a good thing. He was handsome, even by the standards of this exalted company. The aquiline lines and planes of his features could have been sculpted by an artist as an astonishing example of stark male beauty, and with his silver-gilt hair in armor he looked as splendid as a statute of an ancient hero, that his equally splendid reputation for chivalry and gallantry was more than worthy of. There were few to be found who did not speak of him in glowing terms. "Just think what else he must have planned for the remaining two days!"

"Will you be jousting tomorrow morning?" Viserys asked.

"I will. The heralds have spoken, and I am to tilt against gallant Ser Lannister, Ser Loras, and Ser Barristan himself. Against such quality of men, it is noble even to compete, or so it seems to me, though with your royal brother competing himself I fear my own efforts are destined to be eclipsed." Viserys smiled tightly, because Ser Baelor was a genuine friend and ally to his brother, and always had been. Viserys didn't much like tournaments himself, the wrong men always won, the city or town they were held at was a riot for a week, the hedge-knights and freeriders stole everything they could, and left young women to raise children without fathers, and good men needed to be arrested whose only crime was to drink too much.

But they could not be dispensed with.

"I've been bested." Ser Renly Baratheon said with a rueful laugh, folding his arms over his big chest. He was wearing green, and was the only member of his family to attend, his oldest brothers had both gone and found wars to get involved in. "This morning I had the misfortune of riding against him. I was crushed like a bug in an avalanche. Ser Hightower has a new horse that must be bigger than Balerion the Black Dread."

"I was unhorsed as well, though I did well enough to qualify to ride again tomorrow. Ser Baelor has been in fine form." Ser Loras Tyrell said, then looked at Ser Renly and frowned. He was beautiful rather than handsome, oh, but what eyes this knight of flowers possessed! Liquid-dark as polished jet, fringed with black lashes so long they could be curled around a finger. Skin like thick cream, black curls straying around his slender shoulders. You wouldn't think him the best of the three knights, but appearances deceived. "I think it rude to suggest that Ser Baelor's horse rolled you over."

Ser Renly laughed again. He was not a man that stayed downcast for long. "It's rider played his part as well, and I have know shame in losing to such a man. And there's a great deal of me to hit the ground," he said "and the ground is hard, but no harm done that I can see. How about you, no interest in trying the lists?"

Viserys nodded appreciatively. "My brother is the warrior in our family. I prefer the warm hall, basking in the beauty of this place and all these fair ladies and their daughters. Who wouldn't?"

"A man with a war to prepare for?" Ser Renly said quietly with a frown, and Viserys realized that they'd been planning this, the three of them, and now they had trapped him.

"You said in the Small Council, not a year ago now, that The Crown cannot afford a war." Ser Baelor said without condemnation, much to smoothly to be anything but prepared.

"Did you say that, uncle?" Aegon asked, sounding curious. Viserys had almost forgot his nephew was there. And Septon Maynard was there as well, the doddery old pendants eyes sharp and hard for a moment.

"I did indeed." Viserys said with a sigh, wondering if Lord Connington had put Renly up to this. It was more like two years, but who paid attention to anything that was said in that empty chamber? Not King Rhaegar, yet nothing was said save what King Rhaegar wished to hear. "There has never been a King that could afford a war. They are not affordable things."

Ser Hightower raised an eyebrow. "I have never known you to take to the lists, much less risk the iron dice of battle, yet you presume to speak on the subject with any degree of clarity?"

Viserys lips twitched. "I collect the taxes, my brother spends them - that's what a chancellor is. A war costs everything. It is not like a tournament, you can not decide what sort of war you can afford, and you cannot enter into a war on a budget, Lord Hightower. It uses all the money you have, and then it leaves you with an empty stone keep, all your heirlooms, tapestries and the jewels around your wife's neck taken by your creditors, the sheep in your fields and the ships in your harbor stripped away. Everything" He smiled. "It's better to make peace. Peace doesn't cost anything."

Ser Baelor folded his arms. "Ten years past, I wore the seven-pointed star upon my breast and called myself proud to ride with no less a man than your kingly father. I captured ten towns in the Velvet Hills at the head of my army, with my strong right arm, and with faith and steel. And my wife still has her jewels, my tower still has it's heirlooms, and my smallfolk still have all the sheep they could want." Ser Renly and Ser Loras were nodding, though when that great battle was fought Renly would have been eleven and Loras six, and neither had been over there. Though in all fairness, Renly had been over since, given the land his brother held.

"Nobly done, I am sure, and no less in valor. And yet to hold them costs you more then they will ever earn you. None doubt your courage, Ser Baelor, or if they do I call them a liar, but other things stand in your way. Control of the harbors. The terrain, the people who love us not." And they might well be right not to.

Viserys had spent long days in conversation with the exiled prince of Pentos, who grew bitter about the lands he felt were rightfully his, lands that King Aerys had assured him in exchange for his fealty, that King Rhaegar was in no hurry to confirm. The Prince would never find it in himself to forgive his allies for the talent for destruction that the armies of Westeros had displayed once they got off their own land. Their armies had laid waste to the land that they marched through. As if systematically, they had performed every action proscribed by their own laws of chivalry, and broken every one of the laws of war, or so Ser Bronn had confirmed, and Viserys was of a mind to believe him. The battles were nothing, it was what they did between the battles that left their mark, they carried off everything they laid hands on for forty miles around their lines of march, burned crops in the field and houses with people still inside them, and they made people who crossed their paths pay for every day the soldiers left them unmolested, all the while men like Ser Baelor looked at maps and talked about where to go next. No wonder settling there was being fought against. "Enemies like the winter rains and the mud. Even to supply an army would cost more than we have - the taxes would break the country. I have read that there was a time in the North when people exchanged leather tokens for want of coins, and we would see those days returned, and not just in the North."

He'd thought it a good speech, but Ser Baelor didn't look much convinced, and the other two followed his lead.

"A night past, I dreamt of grandfather." Aegon said guilelessly, and suddenly Viserys had forgotten the heir apparent to Oldtown and his two fellow war-hawks, his attention entirely upon his nephew.

He does not answer. What sensible answer to that? He feels no temptation to laugh, or to make light of it. "Upon his day, on times of transition, The Stranger is known to permit the dead to visit those they are apart from. This is well known."

Septon Maynard had gone silent, his beatific smile fading a little. He licked his lips, and his fingers twitched.

Viserys said gently "how did our father look?" He talked about the old King all the time, but the truth was that he often went for long periods of time when he forgot about Aerys Targaryen altogether. His memories of his father, never vivid, had clouded considerably over the years and were obscurely unpleasant to bring to mind. There were portraits of him. Viserys knew that portraits lied as well as anyone, but his own recollections were so blurred and confused that they were useless, and people lied as well as portraits. Both the memories and the emotions they stirred had never been exposed to the light. A man spends so much of his life skulking in the dark, and he misses things, like that.

Well. He remembers being afraid.

"He looked as I remember him, but he was pale, very thin. There was a white fire around him, a light. He whispered in my ear that I will be king when winter comes, and when it ends I will be dead." A heavy silence followed this pronouncement. Set Baelor, Renly and Loras looked very uncomfortable.

"I think your grandfather was simply urging you to be the best king that you can, when your own time comes." Ser Renly said after a moment, with a well-rehearsed kind smile. Viserys gave him a grateful look, since this seemed to satisfy Aegon.

"He died in Essos. Him and Lord Steffon Baratheon, on a river that isn't even on the maps. They buried him there, and it troubles me I never saw him dead. I never could remember his face, until now, in my dream. And his body, shining white."

\+ + + + +

 

The King had nobody to dance with, and no interest in conversation. He was in his solar, reading a pile of bound pages, a collection of notes, fragments taken from other books or from correspondence, old notes and documents nobody had thought worth the hassle of destroying, and other bits and pieces that together made up an approximate restoration of Septon Barth's 'Unnatural History'. It was nothing like a complete copy, of course, but it was the closest thing to be found to it, and even incomplete with whole sections missing but for the most oblique of references, reading it The King felt like a tiny, ignorant boy, from a small and barbaric country, in a petty, insignificant time. Septon Maynard had put it together for him, an act that had put him firmly in the King's favor, and the septon had done well out of the arrangement.

The solar was a room very much shaped by it's sole inhabitant. There was little furniture to distract the eye from him - only a long table with the parchments laid out for the King's inspection, the King's high chair, and, in the corner, a raised reading-desk and seat combined, left over from The King's father. Beside the window facing to the east looking over the water rather then the city, scroll after scroll were bound in ribbons and stored in custom-made open-ended boxes that stood on top of one another like the cells of a honeycomb. There were hundreds of such cells, each with it's own scroll and each cell labelled carefully.

There was also a bookshelf, where tomes had been tightly packed in neat rows, some newly penned, others given to him by the Citadel from the archives, ancient works. On a small table by the window sat his harp, wrought in the shape of a weeping lady, with strings of spun silver, which had given him and so many others such pleasure, and beside it hung the sword his father had commissioned for his sixteenth birthday, beautiful to look at and set with rubies, familiar to his hand but never wielded in anger. "I was reckoned to be a fine swordsman once," he confided in her without looking up from the manuscript as her eyes settled upon the sword. "But I haven't carried that by my side for many years now. Swords lead to wars, and what good are they?"

A number of answers occurred to her, quite a few of them pert and biting, but she bit down on them. Some insolence was playful, an attractive quality that made conversation more rewarding. Too much, he was likely to take the wrong way. So she lowered her head and dropped into a curtsey, inclining her head and giving him an impish, wicked smile, and he rose from his stool - a delicately crafted piece of furniture carved with coiled dragons of the design that featured prominently on all of his possessions, and he walked over to her. He was well dressed in a long black cape collared in the fur of red foxes, a buff silk tunic with gold facings, and a heavy chain that rested on his chest. He had spent the morning trouncing a number of his gentlemen on the tilt field, presided over the mid-day feast where he had called a number of toasts, and finally sneaked away to his books. He moved lithely, like a great cat wading into a pool. She almost missed him indicate the lounge by the bookshelf, and she moved towards it at his silent instruction.

The King did not seem to have any age. His years, like the mournful depths of his eyes and the inflections of his musical voice, were non-committal. "I hope you did not find my invitation forward, my lady."

"Not at all, your grace." She smiled warmly, an impish, mischievous quality about her making the smile seem special, seem just for him alone. She had been sent to garner favor with the crown, and to try to find herself a husband - another of her fathers damn fool ideas, but one she had no choice but to go along with. It had been a lot easier to pursue men before the King had noticed her, and started requesting that she entertain him personally.

She'd been very interested in the heir to Winterfell, but he'd ran off with the Volantene woman despite barely exchanging a dozen words with her, as far as she or anyone could tell, so that was another missed opportunity.

"My wife has always been fond of you. She tells me that you play more than passably well, even compose your own songs."

"I have certainly been known to dabble, your grace." She replied demurely, because of their differences in station and because that was the fashion of behavior at the moment, and she was well schooled. It was not enough to be fair of face. Dark curls and an impish, inviting smile could only take you so far in court. Men would promise you the world, and then forget you come the morning if you gave them the chance. A woman who would rule her future must first rule herself. "I pride myself on a few of my own compositions, though for all that it's a fine way of receiving rather extravagant compliments I suspect most people only do it to humor me."

He put a hand on her shoulder and felt that she was trembling slightly, and even as he rubbed her shoulder reassuringly he could not stop the spread of a smile. "My lady, I imagine anything you set your mind to is done, and done well. Perhaps I might listen to one of your songs? I find music soothes me, and I confess I find solitude unbearable." He let out a warm chuckle. "And to think that there was a time when I desired it more than anything at all."

"Of course. Do you have a request?"

"Make me merry, if you may, my lady. That, afterall, is the reason we are all here."

And so she begins to pluck the strings, cradling it on her lap, and the King stands and listens, still slowly stroking her shoulder. His hand slips down and she missed a key, the music jarred, yet he didn't seem to care.

"I think you may be the most courageous woman I know, to dress in such a provocative, enticing way. It never fails to scandalize the women of my court," he told her, his voice easy and musical. "But I like it. It is as they say, you are the finest rose of Highgarden, and it is plain for all to see that you are beautiful, and that is a thing you should take pride in. I desire to be surrounded by beautiful things." His hand began to stroke her back beneath her shoulder.

"You are kind to say so, your grace." She replied demurely, doing her best to play. He was handsome, and he was king, and she felt very alone and very vulnerable.

"Do you think so? I'm sure you have been told it before."

"I have. But never by a king."

"Well. I am pleased to have remedied that. Beauty is a most peculiar attribute," the king declared. "Who was the first poet? I do not know, nor do I believe that anyone does, but it was he who invented the concept of beauty." He went on, the motions of his hand growing increasingly insistent.  "Our world is a place terrible and wonderful, where the passionate poet who yearns to realize the ideal of beauty is almost always frustrated."

She stiffened under his hand.

"Your Grace?" asked Ser Barristan Selmy, and the King managed not to jump. Instead, entirely self-possessed, he turned slowly and inclined his head graciously, as though meeting an equal rather than a glorified bodyguard.

Barristan the Bold still carried himself like a man in his prime, for all that he was past his sixtieth year, and there were not a few who considered him to still be handsome, for all that there was no mistaking the weight of days upon him. He wore his white cloak with pride, and a coat of scale armor made from hundreds of enameled plates, each no larger than a thumbnail, sewn in overlapping rows on to a knee-legnth coat of leather, overlapped in such a way that a blade would always encounter at least three layers of steel before striking the stout leather beneath. The stiff armor clinked when he moved, and the whole coat seemed to shimmer. His hair and beard were as white as snow, and his eyes were clear, but seemed to her to be lost and sad.

"Yes, my friend?" The King asked as he turned, his smile warming, his hands already far enough from the woman that he could pretend he’d never touched her. He affected a pause, then inclined his head towards Margaery politely. "I take it you are acquainted with Lady Margaery Tyrell? Her father sent her to court as one of my lady wife's handmaidens a few months ago, and after learning what a gifted singer she is, I had thought to having her entertain me while I read." He said, sounding half-rueful, half-challenging. "In truth, I no longer care for solitude the way I once did."

"I am well familiar with all the Queen's ladies, Rhaegar." Ser Barristan Selmy replied, inclining his head to her, lowering his eyes as he did. "Though I confess that I did not know that about her."

"And how are my guests enjoying themselves?"

"Missing your company, your majesty."

"Ah, they'll do without me a while at no harm to them. May I be of use to you in regards to some matter, my friend?"

"Lord Connington wishes your attention. Trouble, he says, in The North, and across the Sea."

"Truly so? And he says that requires my attention? Well, so be it. Send him in."

Connington had been waiting to be announced, and followed Ser Barristan into the room. The stormlander had pale hairs in his red head now, and in his beard. Over the ears it was yellowish, like old ivory, and would soon be white. He had crow's feet at the corners of his pale, blue eyes. He was getting old. They all were, though many of them didn't acknowledge it. He dressed as though he was planning on riding out to war, wearing a red wolf-skin cloak he'd taken from Essos, and carried a sword with him at all times, though it was just his riding sword - a good blade, but a single-handed weapon that's only real purpose was to mark his status and keep the riff-raff at arms length.

Tywin Lannister and The King's late father had left a prosperous realm, during the early years of King Aerys the second's reign their collective main energies were directed at increasing the manpower and excellence of the Westerosi armies, and the wealth in the Westerosi treasury. He was a thinker, King Aerys II, despite his vainglorious affectations, his grandiose posturings, his violent fits and his relative youth, but while he was an excellent king, one rather had the feeling that he was not a particularly good person.

That was not King Rhaegar's way. The King ruled a court at peace, despite the fact that Westeros was at war, and he was known as a patron of the arts and a supporter of them, his court being widely said to be the most beautiful, elegant, mannered, and gracious court in three hundred years of Targaryen rule, quite without equal in fashion and beauty and culture. The King and Queen both loved good music, and so they had a choir singing or musicians playing at every meal; her ladies and the queen herself learned the court dances, and composed their own, and The King was a great guide and adviser in all of this. When he could be persuaded to, he spoke in glowing terms of painters and poets and musicians, he spoke of the new learning, of new science that can calculate distances that cannot be measured conventionally, and all that is new and wonderful.

But Jon Connington was a war-hawk, though he had little affection for the rest of that faction, the sword rattlers and cocksure swaggerers who saw a war as the means of their own advancement. His first loyalty was always and always had been to his king. "Arthur Dayne has not attended. He is standing guard outside Elia's cells." Unlike most, Connington seemed to relish the Queen's fall from grace, to positively delight in it.

"Of course. He takes his duties seriously." The King replied. "Might I assume that whatever it is you wish to tell me involves him as well?"

"Yes, it does. We'd planned to bring it to your attention together, but circumstances got away from us."

"I have no doubt it shall all be cleared up soon." The King replied, and Lord Connington nodded, though he looked less than convinced.

"Should I leave, your majesty?" Margaery Tyrell asked him, getting to her feet.

"I hope you don't." The King replied to Margaery, then gestured, offering Lord Connington a seat, but the Lord of Griffin's Roost preferred to stand, and so to did Ser Barristan. The King did sit, and rested his chin on his fist, crossing his legs and getting comfortable, and Margaery, now standing, stepped back and out of the way, watching the exchange with interest.

Of course it was a simple enough matter to learn what had transpired afterwards, there were few secrets that could be successfully kept in any court. There was always somebody who overheard, somebody beneath notice. Handmaids, servants, attendants, lesser nobles, somebody always was listening, and all information was valuable to somebody. But she feigned innocence and confusion for propriety, not that The King or his hand Jon Connington were paying any attention to what she was doing.

"Now what is it that troubles you?"

"A number of things. Prince Doran has not responded to the accusations leveled against your wife or the matter of her arrest, but her younger brother Prince Oberyn has."

"Oh?"

"He has called you out, your majesty." Ser Barristan Selmy said shortly. "Formally challenging you to single combat."

Rhaegar went very quiet. "He understands that I did not level the charges? That I protest them, I maintain her innocence, and remain convinced that she will prove it? That I only allowed this to go as far as it has to prove that there is no proof to such charges?"

"Yes, your grace." Lord Connington replied, a touch superciliously. He wasn't a very good courtier, Margaery thought, still observing, Lord Connington was too direct, too honest. Courtiers needed to be able to lie with a smile. But The King didn't notice, or didn't care. "He means to face you in the lists tomorrow."

Jon Connington sighed. If the subject pained him - and she believed that it did - he hid his disgust very well. Perhaps he was more gifted than she had believed. "Your majesty, this challenge is an obvious ploy by the Prince of Dorne to re-establish the lapsed independence of the kingdom. Defeat of the King in single combat would probably be construed that way in the Dorne - don’t you agree? We have battles already in the North and the East, let us spare ourselves an entirely unnecessary desert campaign."

It was clear from his face what Ser Barristan thought of that.

"The estates your father won across the sea are threatened. There will be war before the end of the season. Lord Baratheon is planning a joint campaign. He intends to march an army North to deal with a wildling incursion, while dispatch some three thousand men across the sea to the 'Far Country' in support of his brothers estates."

"He does the latter every year, though he normally leads the men himself. Why take men North?"

Connington didn't care for his liege lord, and had no issue showing it. "Robert's not happy unless he's got somebody to kill, your Grace. He's a dangerous man and as changeable as a weathercock. He served your father well enough, but if there isn't trouble he makes it. I don't imagine he was hard to convince. Of more concern is that Lord Stark turned to him for assistance, and not to you."

"I don't agree, my friend. Lord Baratheon is married to his sister, it is only natural that such an alliance would include mutual defense. And anyway, defending his lands is his own concern. If he needs Lord Baratheon to do it, than he's not the man his father was, but somebody has to be Warden of the North and the northerners won't accept anybody whose name isn't Stark. Hardly a pressing matter."

"Your mother doesn't think so."

"My mother is a formidable woman who finds her retirement from public life and royal authority difficult, and occasionally involves herself in these matters. It's but her matter of amusing herself."

"Doubtless it is, you majesty. Still, I would like your permission to dispatch a small party to represent the Crown in the war to follow, at least the one in the North." Connington replied. "Send Dayne, or Lord Hightower, or even myself. Or perhaps your son Aegon, with a sound man to advise him. He seemed to have got on very well with Stark's heir when the boy was at court." Enough to help embarrass the Royal Family for his sake, Lord Connington didn't add. He didn't need to, it was written all over his face.

"If you'd like." The King replied. "Though I can't see why it would be needful."

"If all it accomplishes is reminding the Lords Paramount that the final word is always yours, your grace, it will be well worth it.

"How I hate all these factions," said the King quietly. "And I’m the King, not the head of a rival faction myself. I need nothing to curb the the peers of my realm but my word."

"That is how it should be, your Grace, but without a firm hand…"

The King sighed. "When my father passed away, far from the lands he was born," he recollected, "I believed that with the crown, I could make the world anew. I believed that all this world needed was honesty and kindness. I believed that if you treated folk well, that if you gave them peace and offered them justice they would respond with gratitude. I thought I could dissolve evil with good." He paused.

"I suppose I thought of people as dogs." He added sadly.

"Not dogs, but direwolves. Stags. Serpents." Connington's face curled at the last word, but his tone of voice didn't change. "There is no harm in this, your grace." The King's Hand reassured him. 

The King set his face. "I will have nothing to do with factions."

Connington opened his mouth to reply, but it was Ser Barristan who stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Your grace, I stand behind you at all times, in everything. I have not asked you for anything. I stand for the kingdom. And I say that your Lords Paramount have too many men-at-arms and too much power already, and presume too much upon your patience. Either bring them to heel, or you shall regret it."

"I’ll consider it," the King said, and the audience was at an end.

As they left, The King shook his head, as though dismissing something unpleasant from his thoughts, and then smiled at her as though just remembering that she was there, and motioned for her to play. And so she did, and once more The King rose from the stool he always sat upon to read - and again put his hand on her shoulder. "How I wish it could all be like this." He whispered to her.


	7. Stannis, Lancel, Golden Company, Lyanna, Edric

Like all the towns of the Far Country, of Andalos, Pig-Barter (the name given to the town when they had taken it) was fortified. Thick stone walls enclosed it's tight streets. Those walls, however, had been allowed to rot by the neglectful Ser Godry Farring, the knight who had been granted the town, and whose body now swung from a high gibbet over the gates, his eyes bulging obscenely, his face swollen and twisted.

Perhaps Ser Farring had done the best he could. Perhaps a poor harvest, or a heavy draft of fighting men, or the simple lack of money had made his job impossible. Perhaps he had prioritized other matters - there were always plenty, and never enough money to go around. But it hardly mattered now. An example had to be set.

With the walls in a state of disrepair, Lord Stannis Baratheon had declared the town indefensible, and as a concequence the battle he had brought two thousand men to prepare for would be fought on the plains, out in the open, under the eyes of whatever gods deigned to observe.

Perhaps that had been a mistake. It certainly felt like one.

A sudden gust of wind beat against the flap of Stannis's tent, forcing it's way within. Candles were gutted, papers blown wildly about, and men swore, then struggled to secure the canvas against the autumn rains that had so far proven to be a far more relentless foe than the Pentoshi and Dothraki alike, rains that had turned what had been a precisely organised military camp into a muddy swamp and turned tempers from savage to vicious.

Even as they succeeded in shutting out the elements, thunder crashed overhead, seemed to come from within the tent itself, so close it was. Stannis's ever-present scowl deepened. His men eyed him uneasily, and knowing his mood most of them tried to find an excuse to make themselves scarce, preferring the storm to their lord's poor temper. The rains were starting up again, drumming on already sodden canvas. It had been raining two days already, and this downpour would make the earth well with water, hampering the charge of the warhorses. Ruin bowstrings, and leave his men dispirited. But it couldn't be helped.

Despite the dark, it wasn't late, night had fallen scarce an hour ago, and outside his pavilion his army was making its preparations in spite of it. Foot soldiers oiled and sharpened blades, bright sparks leaping from steel and stone. Knights and squires did what they could to restore their kit, and keep rust at bay. Archers restrung their bows, testing and retesting the tension. Fletchers made new arrows. The men-at-arms, their black and yellow livery faded and ragged, had congregated around the smoking cooking fires for warmth. Long lines of men had formed before the armourers, each wanting a variation of the same thing, and they traded old stories to pass the time. Anyone standing close enough to hear them would have found their gravelly voices to be loud and boisterous, even this late. The storm didn't bother them, most of them were used to it, the rest didn't want to show weakness in front of those that were.

The levies were quieter; fewer of them were out of whatever passed for shelter, but those few who were awake were conscientiously following the example of the professionals, sighting their bows and testing their arrows and trying to keep dry. Even for these woodsmen, levied soldiers though they were, a battle against raiders was no unusual event, if the scale was a little outside their experience.

It should have reassured him. It did not.

Stannis Baratheon bore a very different character from his older brother. He was a skilful enough commander, and none disputed his personal courage, but his fame as a warrior was not in the league of Robert, whose wits, daring and strong right arm had accomplished those personal feats that dazzled his contemporaries and inspired his nearly legendary status.

In contrast, caution and wariness were the qualities that Stannis depended upon in battle, to which he owed much of his success as a commander. Though he trained dutifully with his master-at-arms and the knights in his service, and had done so since he was a child, Stannis had rarely been known to mix personally in the affray, preferring to direct the manoeuvres of his men, and hence preserved that inestimable advantage of coolness and calculation, which was not always characteristic of the eager hardihood of his brother.

So far, this campaign was failing to achieve any of it's aims. For one thing, the differences between Stannis Baratheon and Tygett Lannister seemed to be deepening daily. Both were self-willed, accustomed to command but not to compromise - at least in their own lands; nor was the developing friction eased any by Tygett's reluctance to keep Stannis appraised of his own position. Somewhere to the South, holding himself in readiness to spring into action when at last the Pentoshi came forth in their power, and the three Lords of Far Country were left to draw their severed strength into a host of tatters to meet them. Or at least, so he presumed, Lord Quentin Tyrell had yet to bestir himself. Who knew if he would?

The last messenger to reach him was all but cowering, his head bowed out of a sense of self-preservation. "I'm sorry, my lord, but all I can tell you is what I know."

"Then use your wits," Stannis snapped at him. A few of his men stood with him, Ser Brus Buckler and Ser Patrek Selmy, a map of the East spread before them, wine glasses at hand. The two of them leaned closer to so as to see better in the candlelight. They knew better than to respond, and were more interested in the next cup of wine than the map or the war. He'd almost forgotten they were there.

"You wish me to speculate, my lord?" the servant replied in confusion. Stannis only glared at him and the young man swallowed and stammered on. "The Pentoshi have gathered a great force, my lord, who they will bring west. Lord Lannister guards again their approach with the bulk of his troops, and there are rumours of a fleet of ships in harbour of Tyrosh, or so there were when I left Lionsgate, and I heard some of the soldiers have been sent to quell unrest in the east. There have been murders and riots in Maidstone. It may be that…"

"Enough, enough," Stannis said, rubbing at his temples with a splayed hand. "I see your wits stretch far enough to repeat to me what anyone could hear in any alehouse. Well you have eyes and ears as well, or so it seems. You're a soldier. What kind of expression is: 'the rest of his host'? Give me the the order of battle, using military terminology."

The messanger lowered his eyes again at this rebuke. "Yes, milord. Lord Tygett has two forces under his command, the first commanded by himself, consisting of: numbering just under sixteen thousand soldiers, with the bulk of his heavy horse, and his allies, the seond a smaller force of perhaps three thousand, but some of his best men. As for Tyrosh…" Stannis let out a sigh, then gestured to his table. "I have letters to be taken to Lionsgate and Gardenheart immediately. Take those and go." There were no maesters towers or ravens that knew to carry messages in Far Country.

The young messenger was grateful to be dismissed, scuttling out of the lord's presence as fast as he could go, ducking past ser Meryn Trant standing guard at the entrance, the knight glowering massively in the drizzle, his heavy broadsword held unsheathed, his great beard - too dark to be red but not fitting any other colour - dank and draggled. Ser Richard Horpe stood in his shadow, just as brutal in mein, moisture trickles running down his bald pate, his scarred face threatening. Stannis sat at his table and seethed. All the gains they'd made in Far Country were falling apart and it was small wonder that it had come to this, but that didn't make it any easier.

Pig-Barter had once been a small village of little interest to anyone who wasn't looking to exchange livestock for slaves, but ten years ago - due to it's convenient situation by the Little Royne - the humble village had become the gateway into the changed shape of 'Far Country' from the East, a place of vital strategic importance. At the very edge of the land of their long lost ancestors that Westeros had reclaimed, the simple alchemies of distance and scarcity, and of supply and demand, grew into a what was a great and wonderful magic. Goods purchased for copper pennies were sold for silver stags, or even gold dragons. And this rich town had a garrison a third of the size it was supposed to be on paper, a garrison of hirelings who bossed the weak, abused the women, and took money from tradesmen, made up of men with too much coin because the posting was a good way to invest in the caravans that were making everyone else rich as well.

If he didn't have such a pressing need for soldiers, a lot of that sorry lot would be strung up with their commander. But further east still was Khal Moro, enjoying the lands of Norvos in the company of his ten thousand screaming horsemen - far more patiently than most credited the Dothraki as capable of being - more like a scavenger waiting for his prey to die than a predator himself. Stannis had hoped to provoke the barbarian into attacking, but the Khal seemed content to avoid a pitched battle and wait him out. Doubtless the Khal had taken gold from the magisters, and doubtless he meant to take more from them, but as long as he waited all Stannis could do was wait himself.

"How can I stop them?" Stannis asked himself aloud in the musing, half-arguing rhetorical tone, which the habit of living among dependants had brought him into the habit of employing. Even he couldn't have said which of his enemies he spoke of. Hearing his voice, two servants approached him to see if he had any fresh orders. He began to wave them away, then changed his mind. He would be better for taking action.

"Once these wars are finished, we should build on the ruins of Ghoyan Drohe." Ser Patrek Selmy was saying. Long ago it had been a Rhoynar city, until the dragons of Valyria had reduced it to a smouldering desolation. Now it was nothing but melted stone and ruins which the waters had drowned. But if it could be rebuilt, that would give this land they'd built a real future, and Ser Patrek desired an estate of his own.

"Norvos holds that land." Ser Brus Buckler pointed out.

Stannis shook his head. "It's got my troops half a days march away from it. That makes it mine." He sighed. "And I can scarce spare them. Ser Horpe?" The knight stepped in, his ruin of a face revealing nothing. His scar ran from his right eyebrow, all the way across his face, cleaving his nose so deeply it made most people he met wince - and then down his other cheek to the corner of his mouth. "Take a third of what asses for my army, all of the archers, and billet them in the town." With so many running scared, settlers abandoning their claim, there would be empty buildings enough, though Stannis had no compunctions at tossing families onto the street while he was here.

"Put the soldiers, and anyone else left in the town into a detail accomplishing as much as you can for the defenses. Ditches. Palaside. Anything. This place is too rich a prize for the Dothraki to resist, but they are not much for siege-craft." Ser Horpe had to know he was being ordered to die, had to know that without Stannis here the Dothraki would come and there could be no victory, not against such numbers, but he betrayed no feeling at all. He just lowered his head, and turned to carry out the instructions.

Most of the servants followed him out, and Stannis turned to stare at his maps again. As he did so, the wind whipped around the pavilions walls, rushing ice cold wind under the skirts. Somewhere in those hills was an army. An army somewhere between ten thousand men and five times that number strong. He wasn't afraid of them, but nonetheless a great weight was on him. Waiting was unbearable. He longed to know what was going to happen, for things to get on with themselves. "It’s been done before. It can be done again." He reassured himself.

Numbers were not everything, he knew. Even in those heady days when his father, King Aerys and Lord Tywin Lannister had crossed the sea, the Westerosi had commanded a smaller force then what had been arrayed against them, and that trend had continued almost every time they’d met Pentos or it's allies in battle since. All of Essos was a backwards place, at least when it came to making war.

He shook his head. But that was the very difficulty that faced him. The Lords of Westeros expected their armies to win against Pentos, took it for granted almost, regardless of numbers or where the battles were fought. If he failed to hold out…

Well, who else was there? Gains that had taken twenty years to be won would be swallowed up in a season if they triumphed in this campaign. He clenched his fist, hammering it on the table. His father and mother had died over here, his father at the side of the Old King on some river that wasn't even on the maps, but that wasn't so unusual. Every noble house had taken losses on this shore, yet they had kept and enlarged the territories.

They might be slow to bestir themselves, but they would all despise a man who could not hold what their blood had won.

"There isn't coin. We're out of everything." Ser Patrek Selmy replied when Ser Brus Buckler complained of the shortages. "And I mean everything."

"We can borrow more from the Faith, if we need to."

"That well has run dry." Stannis said firmly, shaking his head. He summoned his personal servants, three young men devoted to his service.

"Prepare my armor," Stannis commanded, in a voice that revealed nothing of the uncertainties that plagued him, without looking up from the maps. "If they won't cross, they won't cross. I'll just have to ride to another battle instead."

Their faces brightened noticeably at that, bolting out of the pavilion and heading to the armoury for his personal equipment. He knew that he could trust that it would be well oiled and maintained, ready to encase him in iron. Staring after them, Stannis found himself somewhat less grim as they shouted the news to others and a ragged cheer began to spread across the fortress of Stormpsike. Despite his black mood, he was pleased at their enthusiasm and confidence in him. He could not choose disaster, only have it forced upon him.

"The men who don't remain with Ser Horpe will march South with me." He continued, sounding decisive. "We'll meet up with Lord Lannister, win a victory or two, then get back here." He could fight one enemy at a time, and that was all. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would be enough.

\+ + + + +

Morning came, earlier for some and less early for others, and for a few, lucky or terribly unlucky as the case may be, there had been no sleep, and now there was work.

For Lancel Lannister, there were five horses to prepare. And one of them was Lord Tygett's magnificent eighteen hand stallion that in spite of its size was almost dainty and behaved with decorum when not fighting - the horses only sign of restlessness was engendered by a mare that had him tossing his head a little and pulling his lips back over his teeth, but the big stallion was too well-bred to do more then that. Lancel worked his way with his curry combs, getting at the horse with careful sweeps, wary of the places where its russet coat changed directions. While he took the most time with his masters war horse, he took no less care with the more humble mounts, and once he had finished three horses, he helped Tion Frey prepare their masters kit, polishing the metal with rags dipped in ash.

There were plenty of squires running about by then, and soldiers as well, but the knights were all keeping to themselves - nobody expected knights to cook and clean even when they pissed off the wrong people, there was always someone to do it for them. Once they had the horses finished, they moved to the next part of their duties.

The lions den.

The sound of soldiers outside his pavilion reached him as if from a great distance and he tried to wake himself up. But slumber filled him, like the wine he had drunk the night before; and neither sleep or drink was done with him yet.

The first of his two squires entered the pavilion. The lad should have tapped on the outside first, should have waited Lord Tygett Lannister's leave to enter. But they both knew that Tygett hadn't been up long enough to do much more than grunt. The first boy (Tion) placed a tray on the camp table beside Tygett's bed. Opening one eye, Tygett saw that it held a pitcher and cup. Water, his mind provided. Water. Yes, the lad was right. Water would help with the taste of ashes and metal and sourness in his mouth and the pounding of his head. While Tygett brought himself up into a sitting position, the boy poured water into the cup and held it out to him. Tygett took it in a shaking hand and raised it to his lips. He drank deeply, his eyes closed. When he'd had his fill he nodded and the boy took the cup from him.

Taking a breath, Tygett stood, swayed a bit, then steadied himself. His stripped off his stale shirt, his breeches and his underclothes, until he stood naked in the cold air and the dim light. The second of the two boys (Lancel) placed a basin in front of him, and Tygett leaned over it while the first boy poured a pitcher of fire-warmed water over his head, his torso, his limbs. Tygett rubbed at his skin, trying to bring life back into his bones. He was too young to feel so worn, so weary.

At least, that was what he told himself.

The second boy handed him a towel, and Tygett dried himself ruthlessly, as if he might scour the years from his skin. Next the first boy brought him his clothes, clean undergarments, clean breeches, a tunic emblazoned with the red and gold of his family, and his own personal heraldry of three lions. Then his boots, his chainmail, his belt and his sword. With each article of clothing, he felt more himself. When, at last, the second lad handed him his helm, Tygett was able to muster a smile and a wink for the lad. Lancel smiled back at him, and inclined his head. The day stretched ahead of him like an unending hot, dry road. Battle captains to be conferred with, supplies to be gathered, artillery to be inspected, horses to be requisitioned.

Tygett looked out the pavilion door. He looked the part now, but he would have rather have slept another hour or so, and his head throbbing with too little sleep and too much wine. But he did it.

The sun had risen into a clear, bright morning sky, and the entirety of his army had gathered outside his pavilion. Foot soldiers, archers, knights, auxiliaries, all of them arrayed in their companies, all of them staring at the grand tent, hushed and expectant. Banners had been raised. Pennants flew in the morning breeze. Trumpeters stood ready their horns gleaming. Just off to one side, Tygett's grey horse stood beside it's groom, the mount resplendent in red and in gold.

When at last the canvas at the pavilion entrance was swept aside and Lord Tygett stepped out into the morning, Lancel Lannister nodded to the trumpeters, who immediately began to blow out a stirring call to arms - the changing of the guard. The men let out a mighty roar, raising their weapons and pounding their shields. Tygett, who had squinted at the brightness of the sun, winced now, squeezing his eyes shut and screwing up his eyes in pain. A few of the squires chuckled, to see Lord Tygett so hungover. But Lancel heard something in the cheering of the assembled men change, and the sound sobered his amusement. It was one thing for him to know how worn out Tygett was, it was another for his men to realize it.

Ser Flement Brax was nearest to Lord Tygett, his effective second in command, and made for an inspiring sight. Lionsgate's household knights and himself all mounted and dressed in impeccably polished armour, their swords, knives, and lances glinting in the sunlight. Each man wore a crimson cape draped in exact fashion over the flank of his horse. They wore turbans with plumes over their helmets, and had curved sabres, steel breastplates from Lannisport, and long lances. They rode fine eastern mares, small horses with elegant heads and endless enthusiasm. But none could compete with the fine picture Ser Brax presented. Tall, strong and handsome, red curls stirred by the breeze. His armour was studded with glittering amethysts, steel polished so bright it was almost painful to look at, and a striped purple-and-silver cloak thrown over his shoulder.

The rest of the chivalry assembled there were a patchwork quilt of unmatched horses and mixed armour, but they were all worn and able, not a buckle out of place. 'Far Country' was no place for amateurs, and unlike their fellows in Westeros, most of whom were closer to professional sportsmen than soldiers each and every one had been blooded.

And yet Tygett was not so contemptuous of infantry as the impression he gave would suggest, and he had some five hundred archers to go with his heavy cavalry - about three hundred knights and men-at-arms, and another two hundred footmen, most of whom were levied peasants, brick makers and smiths and common men with spears. Another hundred were a startling collection of sellswords and mercenaries, routiers and foolish young men (and a number of women) in search of what they no doubt hoped would be an adventure and the making of them. Of course, all his archers had already served throughout the long summer, but most of them were in the east – and they were gathering in their harvests, or protecting them against raiders.

This force was supplemented by remnants of an older time, the sad memory of their own ancestors expelled by the volcano of history to the far quarters of the land that had once been their own, much as their distant kin had once crushed the First men of Westeros, and now, with a venomous sense of grievance and inferiority, they lived few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts. Many had come, they had come to hold Tygett in esteem, and they stood side by side with soldiers, their swords sheathed and their huge round shields strung across their backs, but they were still a sight to behold.

Swathed in large cloaks and strung with furs against the autumn chill, they seemed even broader and stockier than nature had created them. They wore their hair and beards long, and many of them were so blond it was as if the sun had bleached the color from their locks. On their heads they wore plain steel helmets with long nose pieces that cast their eyes into unfathomable shadows, as they lined up in a kind of rough and ready battle order in front of the camp.

Lancel nodded to the groom, who led the charger he'd prepared over to Lord Tygett. Seeing this, the men quieted down. Lord Tygett thanked the groom. His breath still smelled of sour wine, but he sounded remarkably like himself.

The trumpeters sounded another long call, the summons this time, and Tygett swung himself onto his mount. The charger reared, pawing the air, prancing gracefully. Lancel saw the men pointing, awe on their faces, and he had no doubt that from a distance in that moment, Tygett still looked a great knight, a fearless and undefeatable commander, a legend. But none of the men were close enough to see Tygett wince again at the pounding of his head, or hear him growl at the horse "don't do that you whore!"

Lancel watched his uncle's gleaming, steel-clad back as a heavy column of knights and men-at-arms fell into line behind him and made their way south. Behind, twenty carts rolled along with the infantry in their long hauberks, spears over their shoulders. They rattled along for half a league. For all their late start, it was a beautiful day.

A part of Lancel was caught up in the excitement, but mostly he wished he was back at home in Casterly Rock. His father Ser Kevan had written a letter to him, arranging his proposal to Eleyna Westerling once he was knighted. By implication, he’d have to go home to wed her. He'd served for six years now, but Tygett expected him to bloody himself in battle before being honoured. But there would be a battle soon, and then, once home and away from 'Far Country' and the endless war…

Or he could stay here, and look for a cause to fight for. Land, or faith, or survival. There didn't seem to be anything else. He sighed.

She was only a little younger than him, and though if he'd ever met her he'd forgotten it he had it that she was very pretty, and the portrait he had received with the proposition seemed to agree. Men lied, and so did portraits, of course, but nonetheless he was looking forward to it. Once home, he’d pull her into bed, close the hangings, and spend the rest of his life…

Well, he'd figure it out. He'd had enough war already and was yet to even fight, but there was time to learn other things.

Until then, all the troubadours said that good love made a man a better knight, and Lancel had to admit that she sounded a lot better than anything he'd been told to fight for in Far County.

\+ + + + +

Sixty miles south, Ser Myles 'Blackheart' Toyne mounted his horse, took his helmet from his subordinate the junior captain of the Andals, and his sword from the senior, then rode to his officers to review the magnificent army that Pentos was paying for. Ser Tristan Rivers glanced at the two men, and shook his head. The junior was cautious in ceremony, unsure of both his rank and his responsibilities, and overcompensating as a consequence. As for the senior, he was still getting used to having a rank at all. He was a chieftain from the Velvet Hills, Harold Summer (that's what they called him on the rolls, at least) and he had a great reputation as a killer, but no experience in the lines, in fighting as part of a proper army. None.

But they were proud, these men whose blood traced from the same river as he for all that his own had split apart long ago, and they would not serve under anyone not of their own clan, as knights resented any untitled commanders. And they were the closest thing to soldiers Pentos had possessed. Even now, after thousands of years and so much upset in the world, many of what were left of the Andals came down from the hills and made the treck, coming to Pentos to swear to guard the Prince with their lives, remembering some old obligation that the rest of the world had forgotten and now took for granted. They were loyal, or some of them were at least.

And they each fought like three men.

Ser Tristan Rivers was aware the senior captain must be as dangerous a man as he were like to find no matter where he went, or else the rest wouldn't respect him, and seemed a good enough commander to know which orders to give and what would be done on its own, so despite himself he liked the big man. But for all that, he was a symptom of the Golden Company's greatest problem - too many new men.

Still, they needed all the men they could get. Rather than follow Ser Blackheart, he lingered, glancing instead at their great hope, the boy Aegon, the presumptive king, the last Blackfyre, who was talking to the fat man of books he enjoyed. Little Aegon had read most of the great classical authors from both continents, or so he boasted. Ser Rivers wasn't in a position to argue - he couldn't read. The fat man took obvious delight in the boys great love of learning, the education he had recieved had been comprehensive, but you couldn't teach a boy with no desire to learn.

"And I hear you are a musician." the voice was low, indulgent, more the purr of a great cat than any voice a man should have. The fat man boasted of being the richest man in the world, and certainly did not seem likely to run out of gold, or at least, hadn't yet, and he'd paid for most of the army.

"It's my Yunkai blood." Aegon replied with an artless shrug. "And my mother loved music." A shadow crossed his face, but was quickly gone.

"Yes." The fat man agreed, his own features far better schooled, and giving nothing away save his obvious fondness for the boy. "Yes, she did."

"I play and I write songs. Perhaps I will compose one we might march to?" His enthusiasm was infectious, and Ser Rivers almost asked him to do just that, but decided against it. Somehow he didn't want to interrupt.

"And the rest?"

"Daily, I practice horsemanship, archery, fencing, jousting, wrestling and swordsmanship." He was learning to fight with a sword and an axe and everything else. No wonder he looked so fit and strong for his age.

"And yet you have time for all that study."

"I want to excell at everything!" Their hope cried out, reminding them all just how young he was. "There is not enough time in one life to do all the things that I want to do."

The fat man only sighed. "In time, it will seem as though these days passed without care or thought. And you will be king, you will have all at your command, and you will be able to do all those things you dream about."

Ser Rivers would have liked to have lingered longer, but they had broken camp and were marching again. A tributary flowed on their right and to the south, the hills rolled away into long downs, some crowned with ancient hillforts, complex rings of earth, and some with standing cairns so ancient they still remembered the Seven Gods.

Ser Blackheart rode at the the head of his army, guarded by the rest of the Andals who made up the Andal Guard, men who usually guarded the Prince but had been lent to The Golden Company. They wore too much armor to march, so they rode everywhere (though they fought on foot for the same reason), each carrying a great axe or a long-bladed two-handed sword, wearing hauberks to their knees (some of steel, some of dull iron) with Westerosi breastplates over the top, a few with bascinets or pauldrons and gauntlets as well, and almost every man had acquired full leg plate armor. But the magnificent helmets were showpieces and nothing more, glinting gold in the rising sun.

Then rode the light cavalry, men who had adopted eastern manners of fighting, with horn bows scabbarded by their sides and coats of plates or steel scales under their surcoats, and billed helmets. Each division rode matched horses in a casual display of both wealth and success. They weren't all with them, of course, most were far ahead, moving through the hills in a skirmish line that covered the front and both flanks of the column. Their scouting had been thorough, they had a fair idea of the enemies position, but nobody was in any mood for an ambush, it was too fine a day.

Then came the meat, the semi-feudal cavalry called cataphractii, at least on this side of the narrow sea, who rode larger horses and wore heavier armor - made available at very attractive prices in Pentos, as even the magisters were learning to either tighten their belts or lose everything. Like most mercenaries, they carried their wealth with them, their armor and equipment individually worth a fortune, rich fabrics and golden scrollwork and gaudy jewellery.

Ser Kevan Darklyn's warband brought up the rear of this impressive force, a regiment of knights composed of savage men recruited from lands outside Quohor, of all places, with scars and tattoos and horseskin surcoats. Most had bills, or heavy axes, and some had crossbows as well, but they were all armored in riveted plate, and rode heavy horses. Ser Kevan Darklyn was all that was left of his family, but he had a terrible reputation fit to inspire dread in those who heard his name. He wore his attainted coat of arms for the pin of his cloak, and his own Sicily, a Red Boar.

Ser Rivers took up his own position in the rearguard, with the archers. They had spent the better part of a year gathering this army of unwilling slaves and professional soldiers, and all told this arm of the forces was fully a quarter of the Golden Company - and half again, Homeless Harry Strickland had been busy recruiting, with three bondsman contributed by Pentos for every real soldier, or thereabouts. He bowed cordially to Oznak zo Pahl, who bent his knee in return like a man from Westeros - or like a mummers dog trained to ape those mannerisms. He was in a combination of plate and scales, the rich black of his jet armor shining with oil and careful maintenance, his pink and white cape thrown over his shoulder. Ser Mark Mandrake was his complement in a plain harness of unmatched, very plain steel which had been very carefully oiled.

It was more than just the way he had moved. Oznak zo Pahl even stood differently. Ser Rivers wondered how long he'd been doing that before he'd noticed. "I am a knight now." His voice was even, and his accent was atrocious, but all these years and Ser Rivers had never bothered to learn Valyrian, or Archaic, or any of the other tongues they spoke over here, so he wasn't in any position to criticize. Instead, he glanced questioningly over at Marq Mandrake.

"Not me. Ser Franklyn Flowers dubbed him." He frowned. "Of course he should. It has always been traditional, when launching a great endeavor, to make knights." He didn't wiggle or blink or move or touch his face like most men. But then, he wasn't like most men at all.

"Not really like our brown apple to do a thing like that. Did Ser Darklyn put him up to it?"

"I imagine he did." Marq replied. Ser Rivers shook his head. Someone was trying to gain influence with the Easterners, and they weren't being subtle about it. He wondered what it was in aid of. Well, he knew what it was about, but wondered why they were bothering while Blackheart was so strong and vigorous.

Fortunes of war, he supposed, or at least that was what they were counting on.

Ser Rivers sighed. He didn't know where to start. Instead he looked at their army stretching ahead in a long column.

Somewhere between five and seven thousand seasoned veterans, he wasn't sure exactly where that number fell, and almost three times as many poorly armed and armored men unlikely to be any help at all, marching to take back land that would take at least a generation to recover from treason, conquest and battle, and just maybe to take the first step in toppling the Iron Throne and the pretender kings whose asses polished it. Perhaps they'd see a return in his lifetime, he could retire from battle and live out the rest of his years on what aught to be his, or at least what he told himself aught to be his. Afterall, everyone had to hope for something, and that was as good a thing as any. The army cheered, and Ser Rivers joined them, caught up in the moment, then they turned their horses, and moved on. Tomorrow, they would meet their foe, and despite himself he was looking forward to it.

\+ + + + +

As evening settled over the Vale the Stormlanders were sitting in the common room of the inn, Jon and Edric, Lyanna and a dozen of their knightly escort (the others having retired to rooms, or standing in knots in the courtyard), playing cards or dice. There were women present; two of the scullery maids had wandered over, and a pair of women who were prostitutes. In the Stormlands, the brothels were licensed and confined to the more disreputable areas, but the prostitutes of the Vale kept rooms in inns where they were most likely to find willing customers, a practice that Lyanna thought was sensible enough as far as the trade went.

The lady of the Stormlands was still dressed in her coat and skirts of her own colors of grey and sable, the coat's laces loose to show that she wore no linen under it, the collar trimmed in ermine which only the King's family were supposed to wear, an act of defiance she'd been indulging since she was fifteen or a little younger. Her spurs were silver, and she wore an arming sword - an uncommon accoutrement for a woman but far from the most scandalous thing about her.

Some of the knights, having relaxed their guard, were telling stories and swapping boasts, with all the expected interruptions and arguments about the details and rough mockery that made a story a story. Edric and Jon had found themselves seated alone at a corner table, where the two of them were talking, and where whatever was happening elsewhere, whatever deceits or frustrations were of no mind to them whatsoever.

Dressed in black, Jon settled himself, his chin resting on his palm, above a propped elbow, and poured himself a full cup of the black, sweet winter ale, hoping that it would warm him. He was at least halfway a northerner, but there was more to being a northerner than having the right blood, or so it seemed. He'd lived a life in a long summer, and wasn't used to the cold without fur-lined jackets and heavy traveling cloaks. For there was a chill in the air despite the crackling fire; the summer birds had flown, and the hunting season - or at least, the season in which Robert went hunting every week - would soon be over.

Robert called these ‘camp evenings’ and insisted, when he held them (which was as often as he could get away with), that wherever they were held (usually the Great Hall of Storm's End) became for the duration a military camp, with the relaxed etiquette and air of masculinity associated with one, and the commiserate informality. Most of the knights had removed and stowed their kit, and were now plainly dressed in arming clothes and smelling of horses and armour and sweat, save one or two that had taken the time to freshen up. A few were playing an earnest game of dice, which Lyanna had joined and was winning - she was ahead seventeen silver stags already. Lyanna was a good player, a born risk taker and a sore loser, so she tended to do well.

On normal evenings, she imagined that the tavern talk and laughter would have filled the big room pleasantly. But with their escort filling up much of the common room, most of the regular drinkers had slipped away. The bloody-minded few who remained were determined not to notice anything. They emptied tankards of ale at a steady rate, keeping their gaze on the rush-covered floor.

Ser Scrope had begun to sing, in his deep voice, and the other knights joined him, an old song, a very old song. It had no chorus, and the other knights began to make sounds - like a low polyphonic hum - to accompany the singing. One of them begun to strum his mandolin before picking out the tune. Lyanna didn't know the words, but that didn't seem to matter, and so she joined in, adding her own voice to the tune. Stormlanders were merry at war, yet all their songs were sad.

An effort had been made to teach her to sing when she was growing up, but like dancing she'd always had more far more enthusiasm than talent. Her voice wasn't musical, it had a bit of a squark to it - more like a raven than a nightingale as her older brother had jested a time or two. But she was still as enthusiastic as she had been as a girl, and always enjoyed herself, and in the right company that counted for more.

The Innkeeper returned from the kitchens, and set dishes before them, fare that few of the realms great lords would have been ashamed to serve the King; baked partridge with cold herbed jelly, a rissole of pork and roe pike, apple fritters, dumplings and almond cakes, rabbits and dumplings in a heavy gravy. The innkeeper was obviously delighted. He'd done the calculations, this was a months business in a single day, all he had to do was get through it.

All at once, Lyanna realized how hungry she was, having skipped the midday meal, eaten next to nothing that morning, and struggled to keep anything down while aboard the ship. She ate with a brisk efficiency, more focussed on filling herself up than on savoring the tastes and textures of the meal - she wolfed down half a rabbit, all of a capon, and a morsel of truffle dumpling.

"Goodman, your food is excellent. Best that I've eaten since I left my home. And I feel these dumplings might threaten the shape of my thighs, but I still want to eat them all day." She sparkled at him.

The Innkeeper looked like he might start spluttering, and he swallowed heavily, but all the knights were all used to her. Nobody leered. Nobody commented. That rather took the fun out of it.

"Forgive me, I am just a crude old woman." She said, offering him her ring to kiss. "But my sincere compliments on the quality of your table. I will tell every lord and lady I meet to visit you, and feel free to display my arms on one of the windows." He nodded, mouth a little dry.

All present were suddenly startled by the blast of a horn, and the door opened suddenly, with such violence that the ancient hinges shrieked and the heavy metal bolt slipped, slid down the door at a queer drunken angle.

One of the knights stood there, conspicuously ill at ease. "Coming up the road now. Big party, all carrying torches."

Robert sprang to his feet and moved out the door quickly, calling for his horse. A few of his men joined him, and after a moment so did Jon and Edric, who had been keeping to themselves. There were close to fifty armored men outside the inn. They all looked like true knights, and wore armor as good as Jon's own, dark steel armour, their horse's barding polished to a shine, the edges gleaming with gilt inlay. The pennants on their lances and the badges on their surcoats were the same; a moon and falcon on blue, though some had their own heraldry as well displayed on their shields, eagles, crosses and red diamonds. Jon felt ill-dressed and somewhat doltish in comparison to the obvious martial splendor on display.

Robert pushed his way past his men to glower at the knights. He was bigger than any of them, though they weren't small men. "When did you get to be so cowardly?" Robert spat. "That you won't ride in your own lands without fifty men?"

"When did you get to be so stupid?" One of the knights replied, looking down from his great helm. "That you go running around unarmed?"

The two stood frozen for a long moment, then, Robert began laughing, violent rasping gusts, and a moment later the knight joined him, while their men all stared, unnerved and confused, and the two men embraced one another warmly, heads on each others shoulders, shaking with laughter and slapping each others backs.

Jon blinked.

Their laughter continued for a long time while the others stood around awkwardly, but at last subsided. Elbert - as the knight naturally turned out to be, stepped back, wiping his eyes. "It has been a quiet couple of years not having you to argue with, Robert."

"True enough." Robert replied, ruffling his friends hair like a boy and snorting noisily. "And it's been a relief not having you yammering on about everything under the sun night and day. I forgot there was such a thing as silence when I saw more of you." He shrugged. "Even the best things have to end." They chuckled some more, and Elbert handed the reins of his horse to a boy who it took Jon a moment to notice was Steffon. Edric opened his mouth, but Jon tugged on his sleeve to dissuade his younger brother. There'd be time to catch up once he had time to finish his duties. "How's Jon?" Robert asked, casually.

Elbert shrugged. "Sturdy." He said, with half of a smile. "He's mostly retired these days, only rouses himself when something comes up he can't defer to one of us. He's spends a lot of time fishing."

Robert chuckled at that. "It's what he always said he wanted."

"And I think it brings him more joy than power ever did." Elbert replied, patting his friend on the back as they stepped back into the inn.

"Well I would hate to disturb that for a nothing little war like this. I don't see my wife's brother."

"He'll turn up."

The innkeeper and his people were as courteous as the strain of just under eighty knights, twenty servants and a hundred horses could leave them, and were seeing to the second party while trying not to forget about the first. The knights and men-at-arms from the Vale were all standing in knots in the yard, with a number of Stormlanders. As large a structure as it was, the inn was too small for them to all to squeeze into the common room at once.

Great Lords did not, in the general run of things, sit in the common room of inns - even inns that customarily catered to the likes of them. Good inns have rooms and rooms and yet more rooms - in effect, a good size inn was an entire castle for rent, where a lord could hold court, order food and have the use of servants without needing to bring their own.

Neither Robert or Elbert had any difficulty passing the time. Reminiscences and friendly insults poured out of them in a low rumbling flood. They sat side by side, heads together, with only the occasional "remember…" or "whatever happened to…" audible to anybody else, and now and then Robert erupted into laughter that boomed through the common room. Lyanna had momentarily retired and changed into something a little more decorous, if not, admittedly, a lot more, and if the earlier atmosphere of ease and fellowship was yet to return to the common room, the knights and men-at-arms were conversing while wine and ale flowed like blood on a stricken battlefield.

Steffon Baratheon entered at last, having completed his chores with his customary care, and without hesitation he crossed the room to sit with his brothers, who had broken convention to take a small table around the back. By then, the near roar of the conversation rose around them to fill the place, and truth be told Edric would have preferred to join the men, and pester one of the more garrulous with questions about the Vale. But the youngest Baratheon got up first and embraced his older brother, who smiled and gave him a squeeze, before clasping hands with Jon and sitting down himself.

"How's that big wolfhound of yours? You do still have him?" Steffon found himself asking casually after a moment's hesitation.

"Fang?" Edric hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Fine, I suppose. I left him with back at Storm's End for safekeeping. Another duty for the redoubtable Ser Penrose." He smiled slightly. "I hope I don't regret it… or that Fang doesn't, anyway. Ser Penrose is not going to let him run about the way I always have."

Steffon smiled, but inwardly he was grimacing. How in the Old God's names (assuming they had names) had he and Edric been reduced to this? After three months, nothing to talk about but a damned dog! No… not nothing. Too much. There was so much that couldn't just be said between them, that had to be picked it's way through, a piece at a time.

He tried to remember what they had talked about three months ago, when last he had been home, but he was at a loss. This difficulty reminded him of the times he had left a horse behind and returned months later. The animal had looked the same but somehow slightly off, in its scent and the touch of its coat. It took time to find the old easy comfort, and until it came back, it always felt like a different horse. Or perhaps it was not something as easily put into words as he had thought.

Steffon had been trained six days a week, from first light and very often into the night. He could endure two days without food or sleep. He could move quietly through a forest in full kit. He mastered fighting using a sword in one hand and a knife in the other (many learned to use a shield, but he preferred to fight with both hands and entrust his life to his armors thick plates, like most Stormlanders). This should have given him no shortage of subjects for discussion, because he understood that at Edric's age weapons and horses and tournaments were more fascinating than women (though in his own case he was beginning to discover for himself an interest in the soft, secret parts of girls).

"Father says you can come North with him if you want. If Lord Arryn gives you leave. He says I'm too young." Edric said when the conversation was not further pursued, as Steffon poured himself a measure from the jug of ale, and took a swallow.

"Truthfully, I haven't asked him what he plans, yet. I'm not altogether sure he knows himself. Lord Elbert says he'll go at least as far as Winterfell. He wants to make it for the wedding of lord Stark's heir, at least, but he also says that he thinks he'll be needed at home." His voice was carefully noncommitive.

He didn't say anything to his older brother. He knew Jon was as uncomfortable as he was, and he would have liked to talk about it, but he did not know how. Jon had never been one to express his innermost thoughts and Edric was unaccustomed himself to expressing emotion in words. He'd never before felt the need to confide in others, to confess his fears for the future. It occurred to him that it made no sense that he and Jon could be brothers and share everything, and yet not be able to confess to homesickness or fear… But there it was. The closeness and rapport he had with Lord Elbert he could no longer find with his own family.

Edric seemed unaware of the quiet. He was in awe of his brothers - both of them preferred to lead rather than to follow. Edric wondered if he would ever feel the same, perhaps as age tempered him. Looking at the two of them, it was hard to be sure. Steffon was the younger, but he had spent vital years out of the shadow of his older brother. It was another good reason to have young men go as wards to other families - they had to learn to lead rather than to be dominated by the firstborn son of their line.

"How have you kept, Steffon? You look good." Jon said, speaking to his brother for the first time.

"Well enough, since last we saw each other." Steffon replied.

Jon drank again, broodingly. "Mother is scheming something. I think she means to include you."

"I'll keep that in mind." With anybody else, pride would have compelled him to adopt a bravura posture, with Jon, though, he should be able to be more honest, and he was frustrated and discontented because he could not. "And father is taking us away to war?"

"A wedding first, though."

"Aye. A wedding first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, somehow an earlier draft of the story got posted instead of the completed chapter, and it took me an hour or two to notice. I apologize to anyone who saw the incomplete chapter, and will get around to rewriting the dialogue this contained as it occurs to me.


	8. Margaery, Lyanna

It had taken more than a hundred years for Summerhall to grow from a military post to a wondrous estate unequalled in all of Westeros. The building was superb in proportion, bold in construction, and grand in every sense. And now it was comfortable. The Palace of Summerhall - birthplace and residence of The King, had been built long ago, and more recently had been rebuilt on the edge of the Dorneish Marches, the southern mountains where the Stormlands, The Reach and Dorne all came together in a region of poverty and simmering resentment, of skirmishes as preludes to battles and in retaliation for them, and of uncivil society. The Marcherlords were more akin to overly powerful petty kings than lords, men who barely acknowledged Royal influence save when they found it convenient, who were only marginally more receptive to orders from Storm's End - and the ones who owed fealty to her family were hardly any better to hear her father talk of it - and were more than willing to safeguard their quasi-independence by whichever means they believed to be necessary. It was a region justly famous for its soldiers.

And there was no way it could be otherwise, the bad blood between the marches and the Dornish still ran deep, an ancient enmity that had gone too far to ever be laid to rest, and even the Stormlands and Reach had never quite inspired the same depths of animosity in the one another that could be evoked just by mentioning Dorne. Even after more than a hundred years of enforced peace, the border had countless castles manned by the strong hands and fierce hearts of men and women who saw a long peace as nothing but a state of affairs which war would outlast eventually.

But in spite of the regions well deserved reputation, the scene presented outside the palace of Summerhall was singularly romantic that morning. There was nothing that captured the realms imagination more than a tournament, and The King had arranged a series of them to be held over the course of the festivities. The day promised to be fair and pleasant, with a warm soft wind and small clouds rising high and slow. On the verge of a wood - which approached to within a mile of the palace - was an extensive meadow, of the finest and most beautiful green turf, surrounded on one side by the wood and fringed on the other by a line of straggling oak-trees, some of which had grown to an immense size. The ground, as if fashioned on purpose for the martial display which it was put to use for, sloped gradually down on all sides to a level bottom, which had been enclosed for the lists with strong palisades, forming a space of a quarter of a mile in length, and about half as broad.

The lists were pristine - the gravel had been carefully tended and was without mark, the barriers crisp and white with new lime, and fancy red posts had been set at either end, each topped with brightly polished brass globe the size of a child's head. They took the form of a long rectangle, the corners rounded off in order to afford more convenience for the spectators. Gates at the northern and southern extremities allowed the competitors access by way of strong wooden gates, each wide enough to admit two horsemen riding abreast, and stationed with two heralds each attended by six trumpets and a strong body of men-at-arms for maintaining order, and ascertaining the quality of the knights who proposed to engage in this martial game.

By the grounds a host of multicolored tents and striped pavilions had sprung up, bright pennons and banners flapping from their poles. The tents were divided into two camps, although in many places they came together closely enough that they merged. And from everywhere, the sun flicked glints of silver and gold and bronze and steel-blue from an incredible profusion of arms and armor. Most would not get the chance to fight today, but many had fought already during the preceding days and displayed their valour and courage, and perhaps won a little renown or a little gold.

Viewing stands had raised for all those who had come to watch, with four long tilting barriers in between, and had been filled to bursting by spectators of every description, the motley and mixed assembly of all three estates of the realm (those who rule, pray and work) thronged the seats. There had been a number of quarrels concerning who was entitled to sit where, and a few particularly obstinate or excitable spectators were settled by the men-at-arms with brief ceremony; the shafts of their spears and pummels of their swords employed as arguments to convince those who persisted. Others, which involved the rival claims of more elevated persons, were determined by the heralds, or by the two marshals of the field, Ser Alliser Thorne and Ser Triston of Tally Hill, who, armed at all points, rode up and down the lists to enforce and preserve good order among the spectators.

It had been a wonderful fortnight. Each day in court had passed in a bright whirl of pageantry and pleasure: jousts, feast following feast, tournaments, hunts and picnics. An atmosphere of prosperity, gaiety and romance lay over the palace, and there was a great anticipation in the air at this grand spectacle which promised to top them all. Not that it had been confined to this harvest festival either, it had been a wonderful year, a wonderful summer, and it was a fine time to be young, Margaery thought with a sigh of perfect contentment. All summer fate had seemed to smile not just on a fortunate few but on everyone alike, affording a rest and a respite amid times of affliction. People purchased and sold what moralists insisted were unnecessary luxuries - as though it could ever be unnecessary to adorn oneself in beautiful things, to charm, to conquer, to lay claim to the right to love, to experience for yourself all the wonders of human ingenuity and to profit by all that Providence and nature have given for pleasure. The weather was exceptionally clement, business miraculously prosperous. The crusade across the sea had been all but given up; it was left to fend for itself and there was no longer talk of raising an army nor of concerning their affairs beyond their borders; the Small Council was concerned with the conservation of fish in the rivers; with joy and with spectacle and with pleasure. And love was in the air too. The girls were courted and happy, the boys boastful and enterprising.

All summer there had been a profuse expenditure on public pleasures, but summer was over now, and though it was commonly gossiped by nobles and servants alike that if Hugor of the Hill himself were to descend from the heavens to the Small Council’s chambers atop a pillar of fire, and offer to repeat his seventh great miracle and resurrect the unjustly slain dead for the absurdly modest sum of ten thousand dragons, then the treasury couldn’t hope to put their hands on such a sum without a half-years notice. Even so, Margaery had been shocked to learn it was much worse than that, that the Treasury account owed her family thirteen thousand, six hundred golden dragons payable as interest, to say nothing of the massive debt it was calculated against. Still, that was the way in which the luxury of the Court was maintained; and even those who grumbled about it hastened to take a part in the diversions, in particular for the prime pleasure of showing oneself off to others. And a glance at the stands showed this was not confined to the great - those in trade and even the common people imitated this, for something about the season saw everyone spending rather more than they could afford on the mere pleasures of life.

Guests' eyes were not wide enough to take in all the marvels of the palace or the tournament, nor were their throats large enough to savour all the wine poured out for them in the hostelries, nor their nights long enough to enjoy all the pleasures offered them. Of course, even the very best of things cannot last forever. There were to be three further days of festivities before the King departed to return to King's landing, only to leave the city once again for his Royal Progress before winter, but this was to be the last day of jousting, and all the assembled were calling out encouragement to their favorites and directing abuse at rival champions.

A narrow space, betwixt the galleries and the lists, gave accommodation for the spectators of a better degree than the common rabble, akin to the pit of a theatre. Many were professional spectators - five score men-at-arms from Summerhalls garrison of archers, all comely young men as befitting this place, and younger belted knights alongside the better quality of tradesmen and servants.

Margaery had a good view, she sat with her family, along with a gaggle of ladies, companions and cousins, in a wooden pavilion atop the stands decorated with green, red and white roses experiencing the jousts in true courtly fashion. A servant held a plate of oysters, while her oldest brother Willas Tyrell alternately watched the sport and opened the shells with the precision of a surgeon, seated on a divan with his bad leg stretched upon it. Occasionally he would glance at her thoughtfully, but not say a word. He was scheming something, she could tell - Willas had been spending a lot of time among the hawkish faction at court, constantly advocating aggression as a guiding principle of government, directed both to their enemies over the sea, and closer to home. Her brother Garlan was not jousting, and in fact his attention was concentrated upon a book in his lap, only looking up if someone he knew was about to take to the lists.

She couldn't vouch for the books content, but it certainly looked splendid - nearly one hundred sheets of parchment, carefully cut and assembled by one of Oldtown's finest bookbinders, delicately stitched into a pair of small beechwood boards, each covered in soft brown leather. Weird and wonderful decorations were stamped on the leather, leopards and herons, legendary weird snake-dragons called wverns, tiny flowers and intricate leaves. Between them was a picture of a king sitting cross-legged with his crown on his head, playing a harp. Metal clasps held the book closed, and a little tab of parchment poked out from the base of it's spine, so that Garland could pull it from the shelf at it's leisure and inspect it's tight, neat lines of clerical handwriting.

But in spite of Garlan and Willas, the rest of their entourage watched excitedly - her cousins Elinor and Megga Tyrell were leaning over the rail with little composure, while Alana, the oldest of her cousins who had tormented her incessantly when she had been young and spotty, and Margaery had never forgotten it. Now, Alana's name was Florent, she had a keep, beautiful children including a son she had brought out three months past, but every morning Alana drank herbs and had her body bound in a long strip of linen that reached from her armpits to her hips, and though it must have been uncomfortable it was undoubtedly effective, her figure was as lithe as a dancer again, and she was more infuriatingly elegant than ever.

And yet, for those not so accomodated there were not enough seats for those who desired to watch, and most had to make do arranging themselves upon large banks of turf prepared for the purpose, the natural elevation of the ground, enabling them to overlook the galleries and obtain a fair view into the lists. Besides the accommodation which these stations afforded, many hundreds had perched themselves on the branches of the trees which surrounded the meadow; and even the steeple of a country sept, at some distance, was crowded with spectators.

For a moment she was sure that one of them was looking directly at her, but it was just a trick of the light. You think people are always watching you, but that is guilt, making you jump at shadows.

The Passage of Arms, the greatest spectacle of a season a decade long, in which champions of the first renown were to take the field in the presence of The King himself - who was expected to grace the lists himself - had attracted universal attention, and all who could make the journey had done so.

The galleries, high above spread with tapestry and carpets, and accommodated with cushions for the convenience of those ladies and nobles had been likewise filled, great lords and knights of the blood, ladies and courtiers all wore their attire of peace, dressed in long and rich-tinted mantles which contrasted the splendid habits of the ladies, so that from a distance the tiers fronting the tourney field seemed filled to the verge with shards of stained glass and breathing bits of broken rainbows.

The northern access to the lists terminated in the largest entrance, thirty feet in breadth, at the extremity of which was a large enclosed space for such knights as might be disposed to enter the lists with the challengers, behind which were placed tents containing refreshments of every kind for their accommodation, with armorers, farriers, and other attendants, all standing in readiness to give their services wherever they might be necessary.

The King, Rhaegar Targaryen the first of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Emperor of the Andalos, Lord Paramount of the Crownlands, and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Dragon sat quietly by the lists in the pavilion erected for his convenience. Most men dressed in martial fashion, with bright colours but simple, practical designs - mantels, surcoats and armour, however King Rhaegar Targaryen carried dress to a passion. He had not only reintroduced many of the most effeminate modes in vogue under Aegon the Unworthy, as well as setting his own. His gown flowed to his heels, trimmed with ermine, and broidered with large flowers of crimson wrought upon black velvet. Over this he wore a tippet of ermine, and a collar of uncut precious stones set in filigree gold. To add to this singularly unwarlike attire, his long silver hair overspread his shoulders, yet, in spite of all this effeminacy, the appearance of King Rhaegar Targaryen was not effeminate in the least. Beautiful, certainly, and melancholy, and lonely even surrounded by friends, but pre-eminently masculine, high and proud, perhaps even haughty in outline, and evincing by his expression all the gallantry and daring characteristic of the hottest soldier. She couldn’t help but stare, and wondered, not for the first time, what was so damn attractive about things that were so obviously bad for you.

As they watched, her youngest brother Ser Loras Tyrell unhorsed a young knight of lesser providence (some distinguished member of a Marcher Lords household most likely, dressed in blue and yellow) spectacularly, dropping the man without appearing to alter his own seat. He swept down the list with his unbroken lance held high to the sound of uproarious applause, then plucked a rose from his cloak and tossed it to Lady Jeyne Fowler with a flourish. She fluttered her eyes - young, rich, beautiful if considerably over-powdered, and dressed in the elaborate height of fashion - not Loras' type at all, in other words, but since he had chosen her more or less at random that was to be expected. She had been recently married, so Margaery recalled, but to an older husband kept in King's Landing by the maneuvering of the common council, the lesser body that saw to the King’s wishes. Rumor had it he fulfilled her financial needs but otherwise wasn't terribly interested in women, and she certainly didn't seem bothered by his existence judging by the look she was giving her brother.

Willas opened another oyster with evident satisfaction at their brothers display of prowess. His jousting days were over before they had begun, of course, but Garlan had a competitive gleam in his eye. Both of her brothers had an understanding, they trained together, but they did so facing only jousting posts of padded oak. None of them had spoken aloud or acknowledged this, at least within her hearing, and likely they never would, but her brothers made a point of never facing one another directly. Margaery had an eye for this, and though Loras had never said as much to her, she knew he felt he had the skill, and perhaps the speed, but Garlan was a killing knight. His opponents were often carried from the tourney field, no matter how light the mood had been at first. Garlan did not spar well, though he fought like a dragon at bay.

Other knights rode the preliminaries, to excite the watchers for the main event. Most of them were plainly armoured, without surcoats or fancy harnesses. On either side of the lists was a chute, with a line of mounted men on warhorses. Warhorses that fidgeted, stirred, reared and farted, and threatened to kick or bite unless they were reigned in. Every knight ran three courses. the jousts were arranged carefully - every man knew the order of his opponents, and there were four sets of lists, and squires and pages ran from one another as Lord Jon Connington directed the whole entertainment.

Ser Myles Mooton unhorsed Ser Mandon Moore, to the crowd's evident satisfaction. Ser Mandon Moore had ridden with a singular lack of grace quite unlike his customary composed competence, and Margaery glanced at Willas, who looked equally surprised. But the silent knight from the vale rose again with his usual bounce, and improved considerably in his next exchange, plucking the crest off neatly of Ser Richard Lonmouth, whose tip scratched across the knight of the Vale's shield and failed to even break.

Lord Berric Dondarrion rode in the chute, as did Ser Kyle Royce - both practiced tourney knights. Ser Royce wore heavy steel coated with bronze and set with runes of power that were supposed to bestow some sort of mystical protection upon him, while Lord Dondarrion wore a minimum of armor, not much more than a breastplate, flat-topped great helm with slots for his eyes and gauntlets, leaving his upper arms and legs bare, and a grey cloak fastened upon the left shoulder by a silver brooch shaped like a many-rayed star. He broke a lance on Ser Royce, who got his lance tip on Lord Dondarrion's helmet but failed to strike the crest. They rounded for another pass and Lord Dondarrion tipped his opponent onto the ground with relative ease, having taken his measure in the first pass and found it wanting.

Lord Bryce Caron caught a young knight - one of the Freys - in the shoulder, and his strike destroyed the other man's pauldron and injured the shoulder beneath it. A dozen men took the injured knight away, and Lord Caron, visibly shaken, had his shield dismounted and withdrew. Two unremarkable courses were run, and then Ser Renly Baratheon, who was one of the crowd's darlings and very popular with those who’d had no personal contact with him dropped three opponents in a row. He seemed to be in good form, and the crowd were cheering his name when a freerider named Lothar Brune knocked him back on his saddle without unhorsing him and was judged to be the better lance on points. Renly rode off to sulky silence among the Stormlanders and to the the wild celebrations of a few other free riders waiting their own chance to tilt.

But Ser Loras dominated the morning. His lance was sure and it was clearly his day - he dropped Ser Anduin Swyft hard enough to make people in the crowd wince, and unhorsed Ser Aron Santagar as well, then broke a lance with Oswell Whent. The jousting went all day, and by mid afternoon it was time for the main event. On a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched a dozen magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of the knightly finalists from the matches leading up to this day. Before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire and his pages and valets, quaintly disguised as savages from the Summer Isles or dressed as children of the forest, or in other fantastic dress, according to the caprice of their masters and the character the knight in question had assumed for the purposes of the tournament.

The central pavilion, as the place of honour, had been assigned to Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of Morning. The King, whose renown in all games of chivalry had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, though he was yet to ride. On one side of his tent were pitched those of Ser Jaime Lannister, Ser Baelor Hightower and Ser Oberyn Martell, the defendant champions, and on the other was pitched Dayne’s brothers in the Kingsguard. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. It was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms.

Ser Baelor Hightower was her first cousin, and had the honor to be among the first of the finalists to ride, saving his strength rather than taking part in the opening exhibits. Now, he was preparing with his entourage, among them his brother Garth, called Greysteel and a well-regarded knight in his own right, his nephew who was also his squire Alyn Ambrose, his close friend Roger Sand, and finally Robert of Bronzegate, who, mounted on a horse in keeping with his own size, could overlook the whole crowd. Ser Baelor’s hair was long and well kept, but even at such a distance one could see the threads of grey in the blond. At the other end of the lists, Ser Jaime Lannister finished whatever preparations he was making, and had a quiet word with his squire. His hair was an unmarked gold, the color of sunset, of polished brass, of ripe wheat. Baelor's horse was beautiful, tall and elegant of carriage, it's gleaming black hide unrelieved by marks of any kind, with a red saddle and white furniture all pointed in gold.

See Jaime Lannister's huge roan horse had nostrils so red it seemed to breathe fire, and wore a gorgeous caparison of the House of Lannister - rearing golden lions on a red ground, the iron rings of his steeds harness gilded and studded with chips of ruby. Ser Jaime's personal arms - a red lion pawing the air on a background divided sharply into white and green - decorated the peak of his helm, the tight padded surcoat over his breastplate, and the odd little shield, curved like the prow of a ship, that sat on his left shoulder. He wore a round faced bascinet with a low, round brow and a heavy dog faced visor. Even as they watched, he flicked the visor down and it closed with a click audible even on the stands.

By comparison, Ser Baelor looked small, and perhaps a little tired and used up. His equipment was amongst the best, or had been once. But Ser Baelor Hightower liked his old red saddle with the silver buckles, and if they were well-used and left traces of black tarnish on the leather, well it was still a fine saddle, comfortable and well-cared for and broken in. He liked the armour he'd always worn, and if it was a little patched and tight in places, well it still fit him well, and that was a thing to be proud of at his age. Where Ser Jaime Lannister was new and every inch of him shone, Baelor was older – worn. He wore a high-peaked helmet with a pointy visor, and held his lance steadily.

The bell of the sept rang four clear deep-mouthed notes. Then the trumpets shivered the air with a brazen lightning bolt of sound. Long and tapering flags were lifted by the standard bearers, and at once the lifting wind caught their folds and unfurled them, the little snapping of the cloth clearly audible to the spectators in the absolute hush of talk and breathing following the fanfare. At once, every man and woman who was not absolutely committed to their task moved at their best pace toward the field of honor. At either side of the entrance half a dozen trumpeters lifted their long silver horns to blow the strident fanfare. Ser Jaime Lannister and Ser Baelor Hightower rode rode out side by side, followed by their escorts. In silence they walked their great horses to the center of the lists, and turned them to ride towards the King. The escorts continued to the far end of the field.

The two in token respect lifted their faceplates, exposing their faces already flushed with the metal's heat and streaked with bands of sweat. King Rhaegar Targaryen waved the back of his hand at them in a gesture of total condescension, and his standard-bearer strode forward and stared at first one, then the other. "Do you swear on your honor, your arms and faith to fight as befits your stations, and to abide by all the laws of arms on the list?" He demanded to know.

"I do."

"Do you swear on your honor, your arms and faith to fight as befits your stations, and to abide by all the laws of arms on the list?"

"I do."

The herald and the master of the lists called them to action. It was friendly play, the lances were bated. They flicked their lances at each other, then Ser Jaime touched his spurs to his horse and almost in the same heartbeat Ser Baelor's gigantic mount sprung forward, surging towards one another, their lances carried level, the shields presented full, the big impersonal helms facing blindly toward the middle of the field.

Some of the gathered gentry were already applauding at such a display. "These two are very good." Her brother Willas said, and Margaery nodded in approval. It was the first time in years to watch such an exhibition with her family, rather than with Elia and the rest of her ladies, most of whom she considered her friends. She'd given her favour to her brother Loras, and both of the knights were married already, but a part of her heart fluttered nonetheless at their display. "Better than I've ever been." Garlan agreed. Margaery leaned far out over the rail and her eyes brightened. This was indeed a rare treat.

They met - and passed. Both broke lances in a spray of ash splinters with a shock that could be felt as much as heard on the outskirts of the crowd, a crash that splintered tough wood into uselessness and slammed the shields back against the galloping men with terrific force. Both men leant into the impact, countering the blow with all the strength of their bodies and clamping their legs tight to the horses sides as they were carried on past each other, both men remaining as erect in their seats as equestrian statues as they impacted violently.

Alyn Ambrose came tearing out on a short squat bay with Ser Baelor's second lance. Ser Jaime's squire hastened to carry another to his master, who snapped it up immediately.

The horn had barely sounded when Ser Lannister wheeled his mount furiously and came down the tilting field, having already reached the halfway point by the time Ser Baelor had roused his own to a gallop. On their second course Ser Jaime lifted his shield a little to take the point of his opponents lance in the centre, at the same time shifting his weapon ever so slightly to the right to try to slide it off the edge of his big shield and strike his breastplate, but Baelor 'Breakspear' was an old hand and his shield moved left at the same instant, and the two broke their lances once again, a small white handkerchief fluttering on Ser Jaime's aventail. A ladies favor - presumably his wife's, although Margaery knew he was never short of admirers. On the third Ser Jaime's lance skidded off Ser Baelor's shield, and slammed into his left pauldron, ripping it off his body. Ser Baelor kept his seat as though made of iron, but the pauldron rolled along the gravel before coming to a rest under the barrier that kept the horses from colliding.

Ser Baelor needed to be helped from his horse, and swayed a little as he returned to his pavilion, but he saluted his opponent, who responded with the same, before, tossing his unbroken lance aside, rearing his horse before walking it back to his pavilion. Margaery was sure Ser Baelor was bleeding.

Loras was to ride next against Prince Oberyn Martell. At sixteen, her brother was one of the youngest to ride at all, and certainly left on the field, but he'd more than earned his right to be there and she and all the crowd had watched him do it. He was wearing intricately fashioned armour enameled to display thousands of flowers, and couldn't resist a little showing off. The knight of flowers rode out onto the lists and flicked his lance towards all his friends and family, presenting a rose (this time to lady Ambrose, who, despite having four children, blushed like a maid) as he took his place with jaunty confidence (Margaery couldn't resist waving back). He made his assurances to the Marshal, then headed to his position as his opponent did the same. 'The Red Viper' made for a contrast, lean and barely armoured at all, with a round shield and tall helm.

She couldn’t help but glance at Willas, as the fanfare sounded again.

Loras half reared - exactly as the baton dropped and the horn sounded his horses front hooves touched the ground, and he exploded forward. A heartbeat later, Oberyn's horse threw up his head and thrust out with his tremendous hind legs, surging onto the field. As he came down upon him, Oberyn lowered the tip of his lance too far, seated the but of his lance in place, and let the point drop lower still like an utterly inept jouster.

In the half a heartbeat that the points passed one another, Oberyn used the edge of his shield as a fulcrum to lever the lance up. His rising shaft crossed Loras' and struck it, hard, knocking it out of position. The move had been a trifle late, and Loras' lance caught the bottom left of Oberyn's tall helm, slamming it sideways into his head. But Oberyn flowed with the force of the blow as his own point caught Loras in the shield a hair off centre, and Oberyn's solid ash lance exploded in his hand - and they were past, and Loras fell off his horse as Oberyn hurtled down the lists. His steed was as good as he was, it slowed on it's own without a touch of rein.

Her heart was in her mouth as her brother was pulled to his feet. He denied ever having been unconscious, but Willas looked pale and Garlan was gripping the railing very tightly. By then, afternoon was becoming early evening, and the crowd was tired, so The King decreed it the final tilt of the day, and the last matches would be decided upon the morrow, ere the sun rose.

It seemed wrong, to make an end of things so swiftly and suddenly, she thought, as she headed to her brothers tent. She intended to congratulate him for a fine days showing.

\+ + + + +

It was late. Her children had found their own way to bed, her escort had mostly retired, and Lyanna herself, having had her fill of dice and song, had gotten to her feet and went up to the private room Robert had arranged. She entered, and did not close the door behind her.

Robert sat at a chair beside the fire, his chin resting on his fist, above a propped elbow, deep in thought. Elbert was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well, she'd expected to find them both deep in conversation. He looked up at her, pleased to see her. She smiled back. She still liked to look at him. His hair, of deepest black - edged with grey, worn short as if in disdain for the more effeminate fashions of the court, and fretted bare at the temples by the friction of his helmet. His beard was closely shaven, following the line of his square jaw, his surprisingly full lips prominent. His complexion, though dark and sunburned, glowed with rich health.

"And what were the two of you scheming up here?" She asked. "It's not like you to sneak away from perfectly good fun."

He hesitated before responding, preparing, as always, to brush her concern aside, but something changed his mind - perhaps his good mood, or perhaps just the pressure of his worries finally growing too great, too uncontainable. "Elbert wanted me to reassure him we’re on the same side. It got me thinking on the rest of the year. The Wall. Stannis. The King." He sounded almost pensive. "Winter."

She was honestly surprised. It wasn't like him to think about the future at all, not unless there was no avoiding it. Robert wasn't one to act at all unless circumstances conspired to give him no choice, he preferred to deal with upset by ignoring it, putting off problems till the morrow until there was no way out of it, and both Stannis and The King were problems that he was long used to living with. Robert was the King’s kinsman and his subject, but he was insufficiently sentimental for that to matter much to him. "Oh? I thought we agreed you weren’t going to kill him."

Robert shook his head, almost exasperated. They'd gone back and forth on this as long as they'd been together. "Changed your mind, have we, my she-wolf?"

"Oh, my mind is long made up. It has been for years. But yours rolls back and forth constantly." Her eyes sparkled, and she stepped lightly across the room, and then, without hurry, seated herself in his lap and put her arms around his neck and kissed him, a chaste, courteous, meaningless thing that was not enough for either of them. "And you expect mine to do the same."

He ran a hand up her thigh, slow and unhurried, following the curve of her hip to rest on her buttocks. "I know you better than that. You have some plot already in motion."

She almost didn't answer. She wouldn't have, if it wasn't for the knowing look. "Yes." She admitted defiantly. "I do."

He laughed. "Which you won't trust me with, of course. Seven, woman, I'm your husband and your partner. You might tell me what you have planned."

"That's not the point. Don't be stupid."

He laughed all the harder. His sense of humour could be perverse, at times. "Ah, my she-wolf. You still retain the power to charm me."

"I told you to stop it."

"So, not tonight?"

"I could tell you everything." she admitted, whispering it in his ear. "But that might spoil the surprise. And you’d be too busy being disappointed in me."

He growled and drew her close against him, kissing her properly, full on the mouth, and she kissed him back, her hands finding his hair, running along the back of his neck, tensing and gripping his shoulders.

At last she rose, placing a hand on his chest when he moved to follow then stepping back out of his reach, and quickly undid the ties holding her coat closed, unwound the sash and the belt that kept up her skirts and trousers. She did it methodically, carefully, without taking her eyes off him at any point.

He watched her with a kind of hungry anticipation, looking more a wolf than she did, and an impatient one at that. She stepped daintily out of the pooled skirts and let the coat slide down her shoulders to join them in a pile of fabric, leaving her standing in nothing but her shift, a sheath of tight silk from ankle to neck. His eyes still on her she smiled then did a little twirl, giving him a look at her front and back, then with a supple movement of the shoulders she drew her slender white arms from the sleeves and uncovered her breasts with their rosy nipples - four maternities had not impaired them - her gesture was proudly decisive, almost defiant.

That was too much. He stood up and took her in his arms again, crushing her against him hard. "Anyone might come in here." He said into her hair.

She laughed. "What do you care?"

"Not much." he admitted, then produced his hunting knife. He pressed the edge against the skin of her neck gently, then kissed her, and as his lips pressed into hers the knife moved, cutting through her shift from laces to hem, the silk falling away as though it floated off her, the knife so sharp and his hand so steady that the blade never touched her skin or met resistance as it parted the fabric, then when she was bare he stabbed the knife into a wooden post so that it stuck, picked her up and crushed her against him once more, kissing her hard as she was kissing him.

He let go a moment to rid himself of his shirt and boots and trousers with more effort and less elegance, raw impatience making him clumsy. She laughed at him, and he grinned at her, and she felt like they were both fifteen years younger. Then she was folded in his arms again. Where their bare skin touched, she was warm. Her skin was like silk drawn taut, smooth yet firm, the hairs on his chest were dark and surprisingly soft, broken in places by scars old and new, the flesh like seamed saddle leather. Her fingers pressed into it, and he groaned. It pleased her to have such intimate knowledge of his body; it seemed somehow to make him all the more irrevocably hers, not that he was all that hard to work out.

For a moment they breathed in each other's breath. Then, almost as though it was an accident, their lips brushed against each other. Then he was covering her mouth with his, and for a long moment they merely took each other in. She did not blush or demur from his gaze, or lower her eyes like a chaste wife should. That had never been her way. Instead she kissed him again, in the mood to take their time and draw it out as much as possible. She hadn't been in any mood on the boat, not with how it had her feeling, and now she wanted to make up for lost time.

Robert preferred to take the lead, but he always liked it when she instigated things, and didn't mind letting her set the pace. They'd had years to find their rhythms, they had learned each others bodies as if it were their own, knew how to pleasure and how to tease and how to build up to it. His kisses pressed across her skin, and she felt her blood rise to meet them as he started to kiss harder, moving down towards the dip of her small breasts as if following the rising beat of her heart. His mouth was hot; she gave herself up gladly to its heat, let him burn kisses along the curving line of her throat into the softness of her shoulder. He'd lowered his mouth to her breast, was sending jolts of feeling searing up her nerve ends, stirring sensations almost unbearable in their intensity.

She felt his hands on her thighs, gently parting them and she leaned back. Vaguely she was aware of encouraging him and him responding, but she had no thought to it. His kisses were claiming her breath and his body was hard against hers, and she found herself tightening her arms around his neck, moving to meet his desire.

When they were done, she rested on her chest. She felt an increasing languor, a delightful free-floating sensation, as if her bones had turned to liquid. She fought the feeling, though; she was not yet ready to sleep. Beside her, Robert stretched, drew her still closer to him. He was holding her within the circle of his left arm; it rested on her, just under her breasts. She could see faint red marks on his skin where her nails had scraped, and she reached out, traced their path with her finger. "I missed doing that." She said, then wriggled as he chuckled and adjusted her.

"No more boats, and we can do this every night." She offered. "Every morning as well, if you feel up to it." She hadn't been in any sort of state for any sort of intimacy while they were at sea, and she'd missed it.

Robert shook his head, exasperated despite himself. "Is that what this was in aid of? Do you want to miss the wedding?"

She got off his lap, leaned her hip out and stuck her hand on it. "It is! And it wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Neither of us seem to be complaining." He said. "Well, so be it. We’ll add two weeks to the journey, and perhaps we won’t arrive at all, but no more boats. But by the Seven, woman, I should be very afraid were you to get something I didn't fancy inside that clever head of yours.”

She stretched. "Well if you think you can rouse yourself for another go, I have a few other ideas. For starters…" She poked at his stomach and he looked down. It didn't show so much when he was clothed, but he was fortunate, she thought, that he was such a big man, that he could carry it better than most.

"Give it a rest." He said indignantly. It was true that there was more give in his skin than there had been once, but was there any wonder? He was no longer young, and he felt he was entitled to a little flesh when he was at home.

"And that was such an easy favor to grant. Who knows what I might want tomorrow? Something for Jon, perhaps? I think he'd look just precious with the kings sister on his arm, don't you?" The playful tone remained, but her eyes had hardened. "A royal princess is just the right match for Jon."

Robert closed his eyes as if pained at the thought. "That’s your plan? Lyanna..."

"It's just a thought. I've had others. Would you prefer to hear them instead?"

She had expected him to begin to lose his temper. Instead he laughed. “How did it go? ‘And from Lys he brought Salome, and she danced for the Magisters of Pentos until they were mad with desire. And she promised she would stay if each of them made a promise in return, that they would give her the head of Hugor of the Hill, on a platter of silver’.” He shook his head. “I think that’s how it goes.”

Lyanna didn’t respond.

Robert no longer looked so contented. He had a hard look in his eye now as well, a match for her own. "No.” He said instead. “I mislike what I have heard so far more than enough already." then he sighed. "Killing the king is one matter. This is another thing entirely."

"Jon was born to be a king."

"So were a lot of people.” Robert replied with a shrug. “Many of them never got to be anyway, but the world seems to have gotten on alright in spite of that. He can have Storm’s End once we’re gone, and leave the throne to them it comes to. Let Jon live for himself, rather than for you." He replied, just as stubbornly. His blue eyes met her grey ones and they both glared, neither willing or able to look away. "We agreed." He reminded her.

"We did." She admitted. "But he's seventeen, Robert. And it’s up to him. We agreed that, too.”

”We did.” Robert conceded, looking tired as he followed her implication and realized she’d gone behind his back. “What of it?”

She rolled her eyes. “I told him, of course. Before he left for the capital, six years ago." Her lips twitched, exposing an expanse of upper teeth. “I told him all of it.”

"Bitch." It shouldn't be possible to say the word as affectionately as he did. Then he laughed again, and shook his head. "Well, if that's how it is, that's how it is. It's done. I’ll take him to battle - a reputation as a warrior will do him good. Then he can convince me this is what he wants, and I’ll make him king if it is. But it's a good thing that one of us is an idealist."

He meant it as light teasing, but she went quiet. "I'm not, really." She said at last. "Maybe I used to be, but I think there was more love in me, back then. More joy. Sometimes now, I fear I've used it all up." She stopped, before finding words. "Sometimes it seems to me that there's everything in life but hope." Her voice broke at the end of the sentence. She couldn't help it.

He pulled her close to him, and brushed his lips against the top of her head, where her hair met her forehead. "I don't know about that. We're both still alive, despite everything. For all I know, that's what hope is." He kissed her again as she made a sound difficult to categorize. "I should have been a great fool not to love you, my she-wolf."


	9. Golden Company, Sam

**Golden Company**

It was a filthy habit, but Ser Tristan Rivers intended to quit. Just as soon as he fought his way back home, and claimed the castle and lands that ought to have been his anyway. He’d been telling himself that for years now, almost to the extent that it had become a personal joke, but his word had never felt so urgent, or given him such a need to savor the smoke. He also felt a ridiculous but nevertheless strong desire to simply stand up, walk out, kick his horse into a gallop and leave all this foolishness behind him: in particular Ser Darklyn and Ser Gerold (Darkstar, as he called himself) and their collection of madmen who filed their teeth to points, ate red meat raw and called themselves knights, though Ser Jorah Mormont was not much better company, as it went. Or Harold Summer, the big hill chieftain who now headed The Prince of Pentos's ceremonial bodyguard and had joined them for the war, and who didn’t speak enough of any language Tristan Rivers could speak that he could communicate with.

Truly, it wouldn’t be the first time. Good as gold might be the word of the Golden Company, but he was personally of baser mettle, and had ridden away from things before - he'd learn to trust that twitchy flicker of intuition that whispered sometimes in the back of the head; plenty of things and seldom regretted leaving them behind once he turned his saddle. But there would be no riding away this time. He had vowed vengeance, and while he had broken a bushel of promises made to others, he'd never broken one he made to himself. A man, after all, had to have some sort of code.

It was why he meant to quit smoking the foul stuff in his pipe. Just as soon as they won, however battles it took. How ever many desperate struggles. However many brushes with death. However many. Not such a hurry then, he supposed - he'd beaten the odds this far, but there was a long way to go yet, and a lifetime of battles had taught him that nobody could keep beating the odds forever. Every battle saw men dead, and no doubt many of them were splendid fellows who one day meant to prove it.

Taking the long stem of his pipe between his fingers, he inhaled another lungful of smoke, before letting it escape from the corner of his mouth. To the south, the direction in which their army was advancing from, stretched several miles of armored men and horses, baggage wagons, pack mules, donkeys, carts full of tents and cook-pots and food and wine. They were strung along a road built in the ancient past and expected, in the present, to support the occasional convoy of merchants through the hills and a trickle of others, pilgrims and displaced and maybe the occasional messenger or courier. It was a mostly abandoned landscape, villages were deserted as far abroad as the foragers rode, sheep pens were empty, no cattle lowed, and there was almost nothing for the army to steal, which was making the men hungry and surly.

Their march had taken them through rolling, hilly terrain, occasioned by isolated pockets of humanity, but more often by vast stretches of uninhabited wildland. Streams and brooks snaked their way along the deep hollows between the hills, encouraging the thick woods that filled each of the valleys. To the north side of the boulder-strewn hills and their forested hollows was a great plain of sandy, level ground. Stands of thin, scraggly trees were scattered in clumps, sometimes only a few dozen, other times a few hundred, forming an irregular forest. The occasional stretch of level, grassy earth showed where farms had once stood, or, more rarely, where some particularly hardy farmer still fought to wrest a living from the land. A path of brown dirt snaked its way between the trees and rocks, passing each of the farms, deserted or occupied, a relic of the time when there had been peace and safety in the Golden Hills. This close to the enemy, their Host had become slimmer, fitter, and altogether more competent, with well-conducted sentries and pickets. Young men no longer rode abroad without armor, and though their column stretched for close too two miles even the slave-soldiers that formed their masses of infantry recruited from the Pentos Headcount - the fodder as Gerold Dayne has termed them, had maintained enough discipline. The problem was one of supply. Every scrap of food had to be negotiated along the spiderweb like road net.

”What?” Ser Myles ‘Blackheart’ Toyne raised his head from the wax tablet he’d been marking with a stylus, to meet the eyes of each man gathered in turn. He looked his age. “What, you ask, do we do now?”

Nobody had asked that, though the question had occurred to all of them. Ser Rivers followed the Captain-General’s gaze at the score or so of those counted as the finest of their company. The most anxious and nervous seemed to be those who were going to remain in reserve - himself, fiddling with his pipe and unable to sit still or stop himself from thinking about his aspirations hoping to keep himself from thinking about what was coming, Ser Mandrake who was pacing nervously and the Ser Jorah Mormont, who Ser Rivers suspected was praying and whose hands notably shook. The only exception was the fat man, who there was no chance at all would be anywhere near the fighting, and who had made himself as home as he would have in his own manse, occupying himself with eating peeled cherries dusted with ground ginger and cinnamon.

Ser Darklyn, Gerold Dayne and Oznak zo Pahl would strike first with the vanguard - once the order to strike was actually given, anyway, and looked composed, in a few cases even bored. Ser Dayne was yawning. Oznak zo Pahl, apparently now a knight, kept sticking his little finger in his ear, rolling it around and then looking at it, as though honestly expecting to find something worthy of his preoccupation. Ser Denys Darklyn whistled softly, fixing his gaze on a point of the pavilions stitching known only to him, scratching the back of his neck with a riding crop. Ser Henri Ector was presenting attention but occasionally glancing down at a slim volume of poetry - a new one, borrowed from one of the Magister’s personal collections. Harold Summer grunted occasionally and tried not to take up too much space - a proposition resigned to failure. Next to him, Balaq was like a statue, arms folded, gaudy cloak of brightly colored feathers worn over a leather gambeson, steeped in oil and wax to stiffen it.

And all the while Ser Dick Crabb stood alongside their planted standard, Blackfyre colors and the golden skulls of former captain-generals outside the pavilion, fully armored, the point of his great sword planted fastidiously between his feet like a great stone statue. A page stood by, with a horse that seemed the size of a barn.

"He's picked his ground well. These conditions favor him, not us." Ser Denys Darklyn said instead of answering, dressed in a thin robe of fustian and a cloak made from the hide of a great striped cat, a maneater that he'd hunted down himself. He was a great one for hunting, Ser Darklyn. The cloak left his powerful arms bare as well as the the markings that decorated them, swirls and curlicues of intricate design, an effect that had been achieved by scarring the patterns into his arms and then by inserting horsehair into the cuts in the desired shapes before sewing him back up. The effect was powerfully intimidating. Ser Darklyn's voice held a hint of gloating. After all, he had suggested they leave their baggage and foot soldiers behind to strike as soon the scouts had gauged the enemies position a two days before and been refused. And now Tygett was encamped with a shallow stream covering his front, and three high hills upon which was his camp. It was not enough that they would be fighting uphill, the ground that separated the armies, the ground over which their vanguard would have to pass, was a soldier's nightmare, a tangle of thick thorny underbrush and vines, crevices, uprooted trees, dikes, brambles that grew higher than a man's head and sudden sinkholes sodden with brackish brown water of unknown depths. So they had waited, and all the while the day passed. The ditches atop the hills deepened, as men dug them deeper, and behind them them the walls of earth and dirt, and palisade were raised higher.

"Of course. Did you think him an utter fool?” Set Franklyn Flowers replied, shaking his head. Ser Flowers was thickset, his head more square than round and shaved to a stubble from his crown to the cleft of his jaw. At forty-five, he showed the marks and scars of old battles on his face, and no trace of weakness at all, just cold assessment. He was a twelve-year veteran of the company, and the antithesis of Ser Dayne and Ser Darklyn, but truth told Ser Rivers didn’t like him any better, if for very different reasons. He glanced at the others again while Ser Darklyn scoffed. He didn't much like Ser Mormont, the onetime friend of most of their causes enemies in Westeros, and he wished that Myles Toyne hadn't chosen to entrust the center to this man he personally thought little better than a harlot, whoring for the master who'd pay the brightest coin. Mormont, who was not a young man, was grey with fatigue. Ser Dayne, who was young, looked tired as well. Seven help them, they all were, he as much as any of them and more than most.

He put down his pipe to leave his hands free to lift the tankard and drained it. And he rested his eyes on their hope and frowned; the boy had not eaten, not for hours.

"You should eat, Highness," he suggested, more from a sense of duty than because he expected Aegon Blackfyre to heed him, but Illyrio Mopantis, the fat man, nodded his great head solemnly. The fat man gave no immediate impression of supreme power. His clothes were only slightly less rain-soaked and mud-spattered than Ser River's own, his customary magnificence of dress all left behind in Pentos. But still, though he and the single, unassuming servant (slave, most likely, judging by the collar) who scraped in after him, the hard, killing-men had found themselves holding their breath when his watery blue eyes fell upon them. The fat man carried about him an air of untouchable confidence, disdainful ownership, masterful control. The air of a butcher casting an eye over that morning’s hogs. "Your man is not wrong. A few mouthfuls of the cold game pie… You'll feel much improved for it."

"I feel fine just as I am," Aegon insisted, trying for haughtier that he could not quite pull off and instead sounding almost petulant. "I'm not hungry. Nor do I see why that is so unusual, why it need be commented upon."

Ser Rivers gave him a sympathetic look, but said nothing. He was their hope; perhaps their last one, of reclaiming what the ought never to have lost, and so they had all noticed that Aegon had been unusually quiet all day, more subdued than Ser Rivers could ever recall seeing him. Now as the evening wore on, he was showing signs of an increasingly sullen temper. Ser Rivers felt a passing regret; it was a pity there was no way to assure the boy who would be king that it was very natural to be afraid on the eve of battle, that all men knew such fears, that there was not a man alive who could take the field without having his stomach cramp into knots, feel cold slippery sweat upon his forehead, in his armpits, his groin. He knew better, though, than to try. Aegon Blackfyre would never admit it; he couldn't. His was from a line of heroes and warriors who bestrode the field like unto living gods. Who could he take into his confidence, reveal his weakness to? He could only suffer it alone.

Well, Ser Rivers thought, if his plan was accepted, it would aid his rightful if uncrowned King, too, it would give him something to think about besides the looming battle. “I have a suggestion.”

Ser Darklyn was the first to look his way. Even facing away, he could feel the man’s dark-eyed gaze upon him, as surely as he would have felt a hand upon his face.

“The Hill needs to be taken. Or am I missing something?” Illyrio said, before he had the chance to actually suggest it. “Their position speaks for itself, and their commander shows little inclination to idleness. He will only grow stronger the longer he is left to his own devices, while the practicalities of supplying this force grow increasingly difficult. I wouldn't presume to tell you your jobs - doubtless you know your work best. But I am here to see returns upon the investment that you represent - a not inconsiderable sum.”

”None of us need any reminders who we work for. At least, for now.” Ser Flowers replied with a meaningful glance at Aegon, who didn’t even seem to notice. “If you have orders…”

”Hardly, that’s your affair.” Illyrio gave a forced chortle. But there was no humor in his watery blue eyes, and the hurt of his jaw was almost belligerent. “Perhaps I should be clear. I am not a military man, that is what you gentlemen are for. Think of me as an architect, overseeing the entire process, rather than the masons, carpenters, and suchlike who handle the particulars - in other words, yourselves. I guide the design of the overall - the strategies, as opposed to the tactics, and leave fitting each individual stone into place to the likes of you - the hill must be taken, the enemy put to rout and it’s commanders put to death. How it is achieved is up to you, as long as you see it done in a timely fashion." Every man present bristled at the implication, tone, and general air, but the fat man did not seem much bothered by their responses. He smiled, this time in proper, baring his small, yellow teeth. “You have taken gold to bring these petty kingdoms to heel. So, gentlemen, get about it.”

"Sending brave men into well prepared defences is a waste of brave men." 'Blackheart' Toyne said, expressing a view well in odds with his fearsome reputation.

”Old men are often cowards.”

It was Gerold Dayne, of course. Nobody else would be so keen to run their mouth. There was a short, shocked silence. “Seems to me,” said the captain-general with a conscious effort, as though he was speaking rhetorically, “that it wouldn’t be good form for me to kill you for that, not with the season we’ve got ahead of us. We might need every man. So I’ll accept the insult, if you accept that I’ve lived to be old in a profession most don’t, and my enemies have been given good cause to regret my cowardice.”

"You will lead the van tomorrow with Ser Jorah, that is the time to impress us all with your bright, fearsome courage." Ser Flowers added, folding his arms. "For now, keep your hollow bluster where it belongs."

"If you are so easily unmanned, perhaps we should leave you to the defense of the camp while we move to attack the enemy. I say ride now, and strike before the opportunity to do so is lost, while our horses and our men have full bellies." Set Gerold bristled back.

"There speaks a man worth listening to." Ser Denys Darklyn said aloud, and Harold Summer nodded his big shaggy head, though he didn’t speak enough of the language to do more than follow the general gist of the conversation.

"It's too late in the day to move today." Ser Rivers suggested as a compromise. "Although perhaps the army would benefit by forming for battle on the plain in front of the hills. To better know their order once the battle arrives."

Ser Jorah Mormont looked at him with derision, as if to say I know your game. But Captain-General Myles Toyne nodded. "That sounds good sense. Let's form for battle after the noon meal."

"I miss Strickland." Ser Flowers said, as the men moved to issue their orders, one after the other, until only a few were left. Illyrio required assistance to heave his heavy bulk off his bench and followed them out. “He wasn’t much use soldiering, but he always could find a compromise we could all live with.”

"He has matters of his own to attend to." Captain-General Toyne replied, without looking up, before waving vaguely at the two of them. “So do you. Be about it.”

"I don’t know if I can do this.” Aegon said quietly. He looked surprised, as though he could scarcely believe he’d said it aloud.

"You have been made as ready as you can be. There is nobody who has ever been better prepared than you are." Balaq, captain of the archers responded. He was a Summer Islander, but his men were mostly from Qarth, of all places. They approached war as a science rather than an art, and they had precise ways to approach every problem, from setting camp and digging latrine pits to bracing themselves for a cavalry charge. Most of the old blood, the established members of the Golden Company entirely detested them, but Ser Rivers had always found them very useful, and Ser Myles 'Blackheart' Toyne swore by them.

"But…"

“Sit down, boy.” Said Balaq, leaning forward and resting his arms on the chair. After a moment of defiance, Aegon sat, his composure returning slowly, until he looked halfway calm. “Now listen to me. Kings must be above the doubts of lesser men.”

“I’m not a king.” Aegon snapped back, breathing far more heavily than would be natural. “I’m just…”

“You are. And you will be. All these men shall see it so. Do you believe them all to be mistaken?” Aegon didn’t look like he knew what to think. “Now, I am going to tell you a great truth, one you shall not find in the books you have read, and if you are clever you will take it to your heart. All men are stupid. They are full of fear and insecurity – it makes them weak. Always the other man seems stronger, more confident, more capable. Better. It is a lie of the worst kind, for it is a lie men tell themselves, and they come to believe it.” He bared his shockingly white teeth in a smile.

"How do I know these things, you wonder? It is because we are not so different. In my own land, I am a king. I rose to the throne on a tide of blood and of death, the first of my line to take it. In our land, we fancied ourselves beyond war. Our enemies could not reach us, and they broke upon our shores and against high walls and our tall ships over and over again, and they never entered our lands.”

“We thought ourselves wise, that we would bring peace to the world, that all the hordes of the world would break upon our walls, walls built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, that precious stone set in the silver sea which we happy breed of men could forever enjoy, until at last the day came that no man had strength for war and then all would share in our glory. But it was not to be. For though our walls were high and strong, our shores were safe and our tall ships kept them so, we carried the seeds of war with us, in our hearts. We could never be rid of it, and so I, a young man full of pride, became king. And already the idea had became something else: For peace, men must die.”

“I came to rest easy upon my throne. And so I would not be challenged, and on the day there came a dark man, a red priest whose name was Moqorro, who spoke out against me, I was wroth. I was young, and used to being feared, so I had him dragged before me, and asked him if he would repeat what he had said to my people to my face. He was not without courage, or perhaps faith. He told me of the power of his god, and that the day would come when I would burn for what I had done in making myself king. I told him I would not, and he asked me what, for all my power, a king was to his God.”

“It is as I said. I was young, and I was proud.”

“And so I told my men to fell many trees, until they had built a pile thirty paces wide, and soaked it in oil. When it sprung alight, it blistered the skin no matter how far away you stood, and seemed to lick the vaults of heaven. It burned so bright you could scarcely stand to look at it.”

Aegon licked his lips, as the story came to a pause. “And what does...”

“Then I ordered my men to stamp out the flames.” Balaq said, in a voice that compelled obedience.

"I commanded legions of men, ten thousand. Such a host they made, and such a sound as they raced onto the blaze, throwing themselves into the blaze. They screamed, but those at the front were pushed ahead by those further back until they covered the fire. It burned their flesh and the air stank with it, but at last they stamped their feet and the last the fire died. And I turned and I face the priest, who I had forced to watch, and I told him that his god could send his fires, for my men would heed my call and would stamp the fires out. I was king, Aegon Blackfyre. I ruled that kingdom of flowers and birds of paradise, that kingdom behind high walls, where men had once dreamed of peace. I survived poison in my winecup and daggers in my back, false friends and noble enemies, treacherous sons who wished to hasten their inheritance and summer plagues. And yet, Aegon Blackfyre, I will follow you."

Aegon swallowed as he watched the candle light dance on the features of the man who stood over him. Ser Rivers felt his mouth dry, and wondered if they knew anything of Balaq at all. "Wh-why? Why will you follow me?"

"Perhaps one day I will tell you the answer. Now. When you sat down I was just the captain of your archers, just 'black' Balaq, big, strong, friendly. What am I now? Am I not a great king, all men tell you that you must be? A savage king far above you, who you should be ashamed for forcing your tiny doubts upon?"

Despite himself, Aegon nodded.

Balaq shook his head, his face hardening and his eyes glowing in the candlelight. "And yet, am I a king of somewhere far away? Did I truly command my men to stamp out the fire? How do you know? You do not, but you saw my conviction, and felt your own reluctance, and you believed in my power." He patted him on the shoulder in a very familiar gesture. "Do you know, I see the something not so different. You are a bright and courageous young man, well-built and in the prime of his manhood. You could be the greatest of knights, the finest warrior alive. You could be the canniest of generals, or the finest of poets or scholars, although I am not so different from the young man who I told you that I was, and poetry and scholarship are largely lost on me. You do not feel ready for this? Such doubts are absurd, you were born to do this. Anyone can be a leader, because everyone wants to be led."

"There is so much I don't know." He admitted quietly.

"Of course. But from now on, don't let anyone else know that. Act the part, and you shall be amazed at the number of people you fool. Life is a game, Aegon, play it like that."

Aegon grinned, relieved despite himself. "Is it true? Are you a king?"

Balaq shrugged. "Does it matter?"

As Ser Rivers had expected, it took their host hours to form.

Having stated so late, the last bannerette was placed in the line on the far left as the sun began to go down behind the hills where Lannister was waiting for them.

"Seven thousand men, or thereabouts." Ser Dayne said, trying to make up for his earlier truculence. "A superb host."

"No one is missing?"

"A few dozen squires, and light horsemen and hunters who are out scouting beyond the hills.

The whole host made a magnificent show, and when they were formed, before the shadows of the tall trees across the valley began to fall on them, they waited in relative silence. But Lannister did not stir from his own position, and the army unfolded much more swiftly then it had formed, dribbled back into camp.

'Blackheart' Toyne, whose mind worked on several problems at once, finished his third set of orders and looked up to find more baggage wagons lined in an orderly row and half a hundred servants beginning to lay out the kitchens, the pavilions and the horse lines for the army.

“We shouldn’t wait for first light.” Ser Rivers said.

"A night attack?"

”Well. Why not? Send two thousand men, a few hundred real soldiers and the rest the men that Pentos provided. With the dark it'll be easier to make it over the killing ground.”

"And who will lead this attack?"

Ser Rivers smiled in the fading light. 

**Sam**

Just before the evening meal, Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell had sent a herald to The King. The man had not gotten past the King’s Hand. Sam, who had given up trying to tell where the lines were drawn or who was in favor of what, or even if there were sides at all, had watched with alarm. He'd only been there at all because he had been hoping to meet Margaery, who - distant as she was - was the closest thing he had to a friend in all The Reach, not that he'd seen her in years, they corresponded infrequently with letters, usually when she wanted to know something. Once, she'd tried to have him made her brother's squire to get him away from his father, but Lord Randyl had almost suffered apoplexy at the implied insult - his son serving a cripple - and had unequivocally refused. But Sam had never forgotten the kindness of the offer.

She was looking austere in a simple blue gown laced tight at the front, and white wimple. They hadn't actually exchanged much more than a smile and a cursory greeting, there hadn't been the opportunity for more. Daylight poured into the hall through high arched windows, flooding the chamber, and letting all present see that despite it's magnificence, the hall was close to bare - of course, with the queen locked in a tower, his mother on a royal progress of her own and most of the two queens respective ladies sent home the efforts to decorate had been so inadequate even his father, who was one for whom the world that women inhabited was a total mystery, had noticed within hours of arrival. The wreaths of holly and mistletoe were badly tied, and some of the ribbons were dirty.

Lord Connington had met the man in the great chamber, although that’s was as far as he was willing to go in regards to formality. He was not well dressed. In fact, clean against the spirit of the day appropriate to a Harvest Festival, he wore black. His sword hung from his belt, and the white in his mane of hair was illuminated by the sun, accenting his age. At the far end of the hall, the Guardsmen, also in black, escorted a tall young man whose honey-blond hair and elegant features might have marked him as a Lannister, or one of their branched houses. The herald wore the full uniform of his trade - a tabard of golden silk checked in black, with a sun and spear upon his breast, very much at odds with with the more northern kingdoms heraldry of formalized, ritual beasts and heads. Lord Connington might have been carved from stone, only the twitch in the littlest finger of his left hand, so slight one not well accustomed to reading moods wouldn't see it, made a lie to the impression.

The herald moved with the grace of a dancer. He was as tall as Connington, or Ser Richard Lonmouth who stood in a shadowed recess to the side where others were less likely to notice him but he could see and hear everything, and watched the eclectic collection of guests with a wary eye. Sam was doing the same, though for a very different reason. The Herald continued until he was exactly six paces away, and bowed formally as though the king was actually present, his right knee firmly on the floor. His robe beneath the impressive tabard was silk - the best to be seen in the room, Sam noticed. Lord Connington simply stood and stared, arms folded, littlest finger twitching, bushy eyebrow's raised, as like so many Sam found himself observing something that had been building for months.

Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard, tall and square-jawed and armored in milky-white scales and a white cloak entered from the King's Rooms, late, flustered and trying to hurry without giving that impression, which would run counter to the dignity of his office. Ser Whent must have been fifty, as he was of age with Connington, though he looked ten years younger then that, and a fit, well preserved ten years younger at that. Some men were like that, sustained by their causes, or so it seemed to Sam - his father was one, age touched him only to make him tougher and more wiry. Behind him came a dozen well dressed men and women in silk and wool and fur, adding a lustre about the proceedings for all that they made for a strange mix. A full half of them were Stormlanders, one of whom was Ser Renly Baratheon, still in his armor as though he'd just come off the lists even though the jousting had ended hours ago. Another was the waddling, ridiculous figure of Tyrion Lannister, who'd be pitiable if he wasn't so hideous to look upon, already stumbling drunk.

The latecomers took a moment to settle, and were joined by a few more, septons and a knight or two, presumably people equally curious to see how this confrontation turned out.

"Well, what is it?" Lord Connington asked, when it was clear that the herald's patience was inexhaustible.

In reply, the young man straightened and raised his staff. “My lord hand, my lords and ladies and all attendant, the prince of Dorne sends his sincere greetings.” He announced. “He renews his allegiance to his rightful sovereign, and his sister the king’s lawful wife, and has come intending to assist in settling any issue of accusation between the King of Westeros and his wife, the prince’s sister, the queen.” He had a rich voice - he almost sang the words.

"None needed." Lord Connington said curtly, trying gamely but unsuccessfully to cut him off, shut him up, and send him on his way. "The Queen has a champion already, Ser Arthur Dayne of the Kingsguard. And there has been no accusation, from the king's lips or anyone's. If that will be all…"

The herald quite clearly ignored him - an acceptable breach of protocol given his station, but an unwise one, Connington was renowned for his ability to hold a grudge. "Upon our arrival, my prince has had neither greeting nor hospitality from his good-brother the king. And now, he has received threats by officers of the realm, and discovered that the Queen of Westeros, his sister, has been accused of treason and adultery." the man's beautiful voice went on. "Which accusations my prince finds abhorrent, and most likely to be a fiction intended to cover a crime."

"Ridiculous. It is as I said, she has been implicated, but neither the King nor the Seven Gods themselves have accused her as of yet, save a hot-headed fool a year ago who Dayne put in his place. And if we presume the King had any intention of co-operating with these absurd demands, what is it that your prince requests of his sovereign anyway?"

"My Prince demands the immediate release of the Queen into his custody. He is not interested in honeyed words or delay. Give him the queen, his sister, tonight."

"Those are not words open to negotiation." Connington replied. He didn't look surprised, or emotional at all. Resigned perhaps.

The herald took a glove from his belt. "If the Prince's most reasonable demands are not satisfied," he said. "This glove will guide his next action."

"Are you threatening war?" Ser Whent asked. "I hope you are not serious."

"Do not question our conviction here, it may come to that yet. But it is not a threat to remind you that the Red Viper of Dorne rides your lists tomorrow. And the King is his opponent. The King of Westeros has no honorable alternative to refuse satisfaction if these reasonable terms are not met.”

Lord Connington sighed audibly. "Very well. At dawn, then." The Herald blinked. "That was a dismissal - we're at an impass that will, as you say, be resolved tomorrow." Lord Connington added, and the herald rose, getting his surprise under control, bowed smoothly, and strode out. Lord Connington watched him leave thoughtfully. "Lord Lannister?"

"Hm?" The Youngest of Tywin Lannister's children glanced up at The Hand, his mis-matched eyes narrowing a little as he placed a hand upon his chest, as though looking for confirmation he was the man Lord Connington had in mind. "If you believe I have some sort of influence over my goodbrother, I have to disappoint you, we don't have much in common. Well, perhaps our tastes run in the same direction, generally speaking, but they arrive at notably different establishments, if you follow me." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, as though trying to cover for his obvious shock at being addressed. "But my sister cares for me even less. You'd have better luck sending my brother, they both seem better disposed to him.”

Lord Connington didn't respond. "Besides, I'm hardly involved in all this. I'm just here to take advantage of extensive wine cellars and to cheer on my brother at the lists."

"I think you under rate your powers of persuasion.” Connington replies, then shrugged. “Still, this divide between great houses must be bridged. Might I ask that you pass that on to your brother?”

“And perhaps you should accompany them, lord Marbrand.” One by one, the westerlanders left or were asked to leave, as the crowd of witnesses was pared down to men and women Connington was sure of, or didn’t think mattered. “Lady Tyrell, the king was hoping you might grace him with another recital. You know how your music soothes him.” She hesitated a moment, then curtsied and swept past him, the very picture of grace. Connington was the only man who didn’t watch her leave. Instead he turned to Sam. “You I don’t know”

“That is Lord Tarly’s son.” Richard Lonmouth said, glancing at Ser Whent.

Connington weighed him a moment, a man who wasn't in his faction but certainly couldn't be called a friend of the Dorneish, and inclined his great head. “Very well then. Stay.” He agreed, then turned to the men. “Well. Not an unexpected development.”

Ser Whent raised an eyebrow.

“The Imp is too far between to ever be entirely on one side or another, Jon. Why set a trap for trouble, or involve him at all?” Ser Lonmouth asked, looking confused.

"And that is why we need him, Richard," Lord Connington answered. "He'll go as was appointed by his fate for my necessity. A man with loyalty to both sides is a man whose word nobody will discount. High deeds must have a Tyrion Lannister or two around him for unused emergencies, and for the daily sweat. He is not an honest man, but for all that he may curse himself till he be violet, he will do the work he is given. There is none else, apparently, that the Seven intend for him, or will let him do." He stared at the men. "But not yet. Right now, we must to look to this ourselves.

He rubbed his hands together like a miser smelling a profit.“We have a golden opportunity here if only we can grasp it. We can unite the support of the people who matter to us - those among the knights and lords who blame King Rhaegar for our losses over the sea to fight them. Dorne is not poor, indeed it’s coast is rich - it will pay for the campaign and the rest of this extravagance, and add weight to the charges against Elia. Tonight there will be an attempt on the Kings life.” He glared at Ser Whent, until be backed down and nodded, then his gaze swept the room, daring anyone to disagree. “An attack upon the King, by a man known for using poisons? Who would disbelieve our word?”

It was rare, Sam knew, for great lords and other important personages to receive visitors alone. Their rooms and apartments always seemed to be full of relations, friends, vassals, and clients. Private conversations were apt to take place in the view of all; from which came the necessity for allusion, the half-word, and the confidence in people about one. When the two principal personages began to speak in lowered voices, or retired to the embrasure of  window, everyone in the room might find themselves wondering whether it was not his own fate which was being discussed. Conversations behind closed doors took on an aspect of conspiracy, but Jon Connington was far too direct to have any truck with that, even with people around whose allegiance he was clearly not all the way sure of.

Ser Whent was cautious. “We have very little time.” He said. “And for myself, I have seen enough of the Dorneish to be convinced they know how to wield a lance, and I have never trusted armchair generals who insist a war will be over before Autumn is.”

“I am against it.” Ser Myles Mooton replied. “There is no call to lower ourselves this way, not when he will inevitably implicate himself.”

They were rebukes, but minor ones, and Lord Connington ignored them both. “Well, then, for now let us handle the army he brought with him.” Ser Lonmouth suggested, the voice of practicality.

”Hardly an army. He talks a good game, I’ll grant you, but he has no archers, no spearman, and three hundred knights. They came for the tournament, gentles.”

Lord Connington smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Better and better.”

“I don’t see what you mean.”

”No? Three hundred knights, unsupported? This will be the shortest battle in history.” He was warming to the idea. “A complete victory - it will take the wind out of the sails of the queens supporters and give valuable hostages against the coalition that opposes the King, it will deflate the commons and unite the gentles against their old enemy.” He raised his eyebrows at Ser Whent, who was frowning. “And award those who assist in loot, and perhaps in ransom as well.”

Ser Whent narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t the only one, a number of the men and women he had been so sure of, Sam was happy to see, looked horrified or disgusted. But it was Ser Whent who answered. “That’s how it’s going to be, is it?”

Connington pursed his lips. “You don’t like it, go over my head. Petition his grace. But when our king agrees with me, for he will agree with me in this, then you had best find your commitment again.” He wiped his hands fastidiously on a cloth. “Tonight, The Red Viper shall make an attempt on the King’s life, an attempt foiled by those of us in this room. Nobody need ever know different. And with her brother implicated, The Queen will be as well. Not even Ser Arthur will be able to protect her from that.”

“I don’t think there is a man present who could stomach burning the queen alive.” Ser Lonmouth said.

The old Septon who spent so much time with Prince Aegon finally saw a chance to add his own weight to the conversation. “She is a heretical worshipper of false gods, a tempress and adulteress besides.” He spat.

“Like I said. There is no man present who could stomach it. Better, if it comes to that, that she hangs herself, or takes poison, perhaps after learning what befell her brother, from guilt. Yes, that would be best, making a public spectacle of this has always been a mistake. By the Seven, Connington, we don’t all have ice-water in our veins like you do. And the commons…“

Connington snapped his fingers. “That, for the commons. If it bothers you that much, we will offer a general amnesty, shout ‘hurrah’ a few times, distribute some alms, and they’ll swallow anything we tell them too.”

Ser Myles Mooton took a deep breath. ”So be it. Shall we inform the herald of the kings decision?”

”And just what was the kings decision?” Ser Whent snapped. "I don't see him!"

”Why, war, of course! How else could he respond to over-haughty vassals and subjects who presume to dictate policy? In the morning, at dawn before the resumption of the festivities, The king asks us, as his friends, that we attack their camp.”

Ser Whent flinched, very slightly, then he met Connington's gaze and lowered his eyes. “We are very chivalrous, are we not?” He asked, unable to suppress the sarcasm.

Connington laughed in his face. ”King Aerys told me that honour is for maidens and wives, two days before he died crossing a river that isn’t even on the maps. I’ve certainly never felt it’s absence - and neither has war.”


	10. Lancel, King's Men, Margaery

**Lancel**

Nightfall brought a freezing wind, even colder than the day. The two squires were seated outside the walls at the edge of a short drop, legs kicking idly over the drop. They were both a little tipsy, Tion Frey had managed to acquire a bottle of Arbor Gold from Tygett's personal supply, an offence that would see them flogged, but on the eve of a battle it seemed a fairly small risk, all things considered. Lancelot watched as he broke the wax seal on the wine and removed the paper plug, then swallowed the thick amber liquid before offering it to him. True to expectation, it tasted better than anything he'd had years, better even than what he'd drank back at home when his father allowed it (which wasn’t often - Tygett’s family would likely be scandalised at how oftentimes he was in his cups).

"Don't worry." Tion Frey said, guessing the direction of his thoughts and grinning. "He drinks this like a hole in the ground when he's out of his castle. He won't notice one missing bottle. He won't notice anything much at all, as long as he's got any more of this to pour into him. Drink."

Lancel chuckled and shook his head as well, then did as Tion told him. The second mouthful tasted even better than the first. "At least you're not finding him camp followers."

"I'd be good at that." Tion protested with a shrug. Likely he would have been too, Tion was all one could hope for in a squire. He had a mouth on him, but nobody was perfect, and Tion worked very hard, and had learned every skill of management, maintenance, repair and replacement that a squire might ever need to know. And he could see, even do a little embroidery, he understood horses, and could take a dent out of a helmet.

He could kill a man while covering his masters side.

"The pretty ones have their own tents, and Ser Hetherspoon to look after them. Though he expects them to do it for him whenever he wants as well. And he takes a cut too."

"That's disgusting." Lancel scowled, then took another mouthful straight from the bottle, misjudging the amount he tipped back, so that he spluttered a little as he swallowed.

"I'll admit, it seems more befitting a thug from the wrong end of Lannisport than an anointed knight, but there's coin in it, as well as girls whenever he wants them - that’s all that matters to some people. And there's plenty like him."

"Not us, though." Lancel said quickly. Tion nodded with all the conviction of a young man, and took back the bottle.

"Fuck no.” He declared after drinking again. “Once we earn our spurs we'll do it the way it's meant to be done. Like cousin Jaime."

"Right." The two boys clasped wrists.

Since coming to this place, Tygett Lannister had drank, and whored when he was in the mood, and twisted his wrath into ditches and ramparts. There was no road through the hills, not any more. The army had dug the land into deep clefts to ruin any cavalry charge against them. Nets of rope studded with spikes had come out of the foundries in Lionsgate, each upright blade twisted into the knots by hand. It was not that nobody could breach such defences - sufficiently motivated an army could be made to do any manner of things, but in doing so they would have their heart cut out of them. Tygett intended to whittle Pentos’ larger army down, rank by rank, until the remnant were exhausted and bloody. Only then would he send in his knights, and grind what was left into offal.

All summer, Tygett had spent silver in a vast torrent, with what seemed like half the forges and foundries of Essos working all hours to supply his men. Yet it never seemed enough, there was always too little of everything - too few arrows, too few provisions, too few horses.

Lancel turned as a trumpet sounded behind them, high on the hill. Then another joined, and another, and yet another.

“Is that… Does that mean…?” Tion asked, not yet experienced enough to understand the shock in the others.

Lancel opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He mannaged to nod, and the two shared a look.

“It is an attack. They wouldn’t ring the bell for anything else. Not for nothing." Tion managed to say at last, crushing his own panic to speak calmly. "Get on your horse, and get to your uncle. They’re coming!”

Lancel didn't question. He got on his horse, and he rode.

It was youthful arrogance and naïveté that had made Lancel think he could reach his uncle in minutes. And inexperience, of course. Absolutely no more then a handful of minutes. Not with his mare - Eleyna (named for his betrothed, and intended as a compliment though one he intended to keep to himself in case she didn’t appreciate it), as nimble and fleet-footed as a hind.

The path up to the fortification was one heaving mass, rows of nervous soldiers waiting unenthusiastically to take their turn while the wounded, exhausted and otherwise spent staggered back towards them from further down. The fighting was raging lower down up, where Tygett had made his men dig ditches lined with sharpened stakes and spread caltrops. At the time it had seemed needless labor and Tygett had been widely cursed. Now it barely seemed adequate provision, and Lancel thought he likely wasn’t alone in wishing they’d worked harder. Individual figures were almost too small to make out, no more than the main sweeps and charges, like herds moving across the earth. Figures in green, yellow and red cloaks suddenly shot out like sparks from the whirl of battle, pursued by their enemy.

Lancel pulled his mare back hard, and jerked the reins, scarcely able to comprehend what he was seeing, how quickly it was moving. He realised this was finally it. This was war. He'd yearned for it, trained for it, prepared for it, and worked hard to earn a place for himself in his uncle's household so that he could pursue it. This, ridiculously, was what he had been searching for all his life. This madness, this chaos, this calamity. It was as if Lancel had been let in on some giant, private joke. Men trained for war, rehearsed, honed themselves solemnly studied military teachings, as if warfare was something that could be learned and controlled and directed, like a formal banquet of a ball. But here was the real, raw truth of it. Then a sense of duty took the upper hand, and he pressed himself against his horses neck and pushed her as hard as he dared.

All around there was a press of bodies, was yelling and hoofbeats, a kaliedescope of twinkling figures, the distant sounds of the drummers rattling death at the enemy, and the blast of the trumpets. And the distant screams. Some of them seemed to last longer than a scream should decently last. More ranks of archers and swordsmen marched past him, joining the throng heading downhill towards the enemy below, forcing those trying to escape aside to make room. In the dark, he could barely see what was happening. He couldn’t see the banners, and he certainly couldn’t mark the individual men, or anything more than the main sweeps and charges, like herds moving across the earth.

They were men on his side, he realised dully. The Golden Company were slaughtering the scattered and exposed infantry, and these men were moving to reinforce them. Arrows and bolts suddenly howled over his head, figures flickered before his eyes again. The armies crashed together and there was no room for manoeuvres or formations. One line buckled against the other, and every death was a sweating, grunting murder, close enough to breathe the same air and be splattered by the other man’s blood when he went down. He couldn’t tell how many there were. They seemed to move in a single mass, like a single organism.

He had no idea how long it had taken, but he supposed it was rather more than minutes when he pushed his way to the walls. Lord Tygett was there, and if Lancel hadn’t seen him passed out drunk hours ago in his pavilion back when it had just been another night, he’d never have believed it. He looked fresh, and alive, and had donned (someone else must have helped him into it, it hadn't been him, and it hadn't been Tion either, they'd snuck off to drink and talk and act like they hadn't been scared) a thing more work of art than piece of armour - a breastplate of mirror-bright steel engraved front and back with golden filigree suns whose countless rays became swords, lances, arrows in the most exquisite craftsmanship. The old lion was so furious he could scarcely summon his wits to command, his teeth were gritted and his fists were clenched around the reins painfully tight. Yet he did so. His horse and household knights had become the centre of galloping messengers, racing to hear his orders, then charging away with cries at others to get out of their way.

“Lord Tygett!” He managed to force out. He remembered he was supposed to bow, or salute, or something, so he tried to do both at once, and managed neither.

His uncle spared him a glance. ”Talk, lad.”

”Reserves, my lord.” The voice belonged to Ser Brax, who was wearing his helm and cloak, but looked rather less splendid then he had in daylight. He said it quietly but clearly. “If you want to know my opinion, it’s time to send in the reserves. Have the infantry move to the front. Now! Forthwith! Or else they’ll dismember the lines, the defences won’t slow them, and that means the end. This position is strong, and therefore we cannot fall back from it easily. So we must find a way to fight."

Tygett didn’t answer. His dark green eyes had now fallen on Lancel again, and his horse, a lathered roan, was cut and scratched, blood tricking into the sweat that darkened it's splotched grey coat. He'd not have believed beforehand that he would ever have been willing to abuse his poor mount in such a manner. But he'd got through, and only now was it occurring to him he had no idea what to do now.

”Get your breath back lad. And once you can breathe, speak concisely!” He ordered. "You're back from the font?"

“They’ve… breached the… front. Our reserves are already committed.” He replied. He was breathless, at first incoherent, the words sliding back into his throat, not from fear but because he couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs. But he'd kept his head, had from the moment he'd cantered out of the woods to find their men reeling from the Golden Company's surprise assault.

”Then it’s time to save your life.” One of the knights said, moving close to Tygett. "My lord, you've done as much as you can. Best we withdraw while we can."

Tygett raised his eyes heavenwards. He had feared this. His knights and men-at-arms all knew their work, but his soldiers were comparatively raw, not used to quick manoeuvres in the field. It was one reason Tygett had replied so much on a heavily fortified position against Pentos’ more experienced soldiers (at least the core of their men were experienced). He knew his men had courage, but they had to be told when to stand or retreat, when to flank and bolster a line, when to attack. The grand movements were the concern of the likes of him, but he knew it was a hard business that had broken those born for it, and many of the lads fighting down there were just rough-trained lads overwhelmed by a savagery they had not known to expect. 

“So it’s come to that.” The old man said hollowly. For a moment, he looked almost defeated, then he shook his head, and with a burst of impetuous energy that had always come naturally to him on the battlefield, he drew his sword and held it aloft. “Very well. With me, gentlemen.”

Before they had a chance to make sense of that,  Tygett and his horse sprang away, trusting his men the knights of his house to keep with him, which they found themselves doing before they had a chance to hesitate, but he was ever before them, a magnificent figure. Lancel struck and struck at anyone he could reach, using the height of his mount and his long sword to terrible effect. Yet in the moments between each blow, he could see the men around him wavering. A man appeared out of nowhere with a spear, and Lancel turned it aside, but he was too focussed on that man to pay enough attention to his surroundings. Something struck him, and he fell with a crash and knew no more.

 + + + + +

When Lancel came to himself, he was literally by himself. He was lying by the side of the road, and no one was near. A cloudless day, but cold, was broad above him. He was shaking, and as chilled as stone, but his head burned. He tried to lift his head. Far down, he could see men dragging away corpses.

"It's something, isn't it?” He knew that voice. He wasn’t as alone as he had thought, Ser Foote was resting on a rock with a naked sword resting on his knees.

Lancel couldn't reply. Any answer seemed hopelessly inadequate. "The smell of it. The feel of it." Ser Foote rubbed one hand up and down the stained sheath of his sword, making a faint rasping sound.  "Nothing like it, is there? War is honest - there’s no lying to it, no pretending. You don’t have to say sorry here. Don’t have to hide. If you die? So what? You die among men like you. You die looking the Stranger in the eye. If you live? Well, lad, that’s living, isn’t it? A man isn’t truly alive until he knows, really knows, what he's got to lose."

Lancel looked past, where a heaped group of bodies wore new quills fletched with good white feathers. One or two still moved, their legs kicking as if they were trying to rise. The archers were amongst them already, cutting out the shafts with ruthless efficiency. Each arrow had been the labor of an expert hand, and was far too valuable to be left behind. Lancel felt a twinge of regret for those men. All too often, whether a man lived or died was down to luck. He did not know if that realisation made him value his own life more or less. There didn’t seem much sense to it, anyway.

"You did well, you know. You kept your head, and didn't make a fool of yourself. Next time armour up first, it might save your life. Now kneel."

"What?"

"Get to your feet, look me in the eye, then kneel. Tygett would do this himself, but he's going to be too busy for the next few days. So I said I would, since we've seen so much of each other. Kneel."

He tapped in on one shoulder, then the other, and inclined his head, then dropped the sword, which wasn't his after-all, but someone elses he'd taken from the field, still bloody and bent, and then smeared the bloody residue it had left on his hand onto Lancel's shoulder, leaving a gory smear. "Congratulations." He told him. "You're a man now."

 

**The King’s men**

By the time the tradesmen rolled their carts to Summerhall and began unloading, news was spreading that there had been a battle.

Most of the King’s household - some two hundred of the best knights in Westeros, and therefore the world, three hundred lances that the King’s hand had provided from his own estate, and near a hundred more had joined them - knights from the tourney seeking patronage or contributed by the others. They’d been told only that an attempt had been made upon the King’s life the night before.

They formed up, four deep, across the front of the Dorneish camp, where sleepy sentries watched. Most of the men were from marcher lord households, or marcherlords themselves, and not one of them doubted what they had been told by their lords.

One of the sentries blew his horn, a harsh bark of noise.

Connington waved vaguely, and his army charged the camp.

It should have been a massacre. The KIng’s men were all in full harness, armed with weapons of war and prepared for the fight. The Dorneish knights, stumbling from their decorated pavilions, ought to have been unarmed and unprepared, and therefore easy meat.

But someone must have talked. For they were armed and girded for war, mounted and waiting for them.

There was also surprisingly few of them - only half as many as there were supposed to be or so, led by a knight in orange and black chequey of the royal house of Dorne. There were no squires, or pages, not so much as a washerwoman. The Dorneish knights flowed together in a tight wedge and charged the army gathered against them, that outnumbered them eight to one or more.

The fighting was brutal. And very skilled. The King’s men suffered because the field of engagement played against their numbers, and they were unused to fighting together. For a brief moment, it seemed that surprise and courage might carry the day. But no knight can triumph against such odds.

Ser Richard Lonmouth pushed his way to the front and eventually unhorsed the knight in orange and black, after they had crossed lances and then swords, finally reduced to their daggers. Bleeding from a smart thrust at the inside of his left elbow, he’s hooked the unknown knight getting his dagger past his shoulder and thrown him to the ground.

Even then, the black and orange knight would not relent. He found a fallen sword, got his back to a wagon and fought back - even as a dozen knights milled around pressing at him. He killed a horse, dismounting a knight from the Reach named Ser Emmet Roxton, disarmed Ser Penrose - who had been Lord Conningtons standard bearer, then cut Ser Whent’s reins. He was like a whirlwind.

And the other knights were near as bad. Each one seemed to require a siege. The sun rose, and they were still fighting. The surviving Dorneish had drawn into a ring in the middle of the camp - no more then twenty or so of them left. None had been taken alive. They were surrounded by tent stakes and ropes, fallen tents and beams, and the kingsmen had to dismount to face them. The black and orange knight was still on his feet, although blood was seeping from some of the joints of his harness.

Connington had not dismounted. His sword was bloody, and his mouth was a thin, cold line. “Is there a reason you’ve stopped?” He asked Ser Lonmouth. Connington was not a demonstrative man, but there could be no mistaking how furious he was. “You await a raven from the King, perhaps?”

“We sent a herald to demand their surrender. They call us a pack of cowards, and say you do not parley with vermin, you eradicate them.”

Connington rolled his eyes. “The usual vainglory, tiresome as ever. Bring up crossbowmen and shoot them down, then.”

A few feet away, Ser Myles Mooton was helped back, having just led a third charge against their tight ranks. In each, he had put a man down with a great blow of his crow-beaked polearm - his disconcerting speed, size and reach made him lethal, and always had. The sharp spike had slammed, almost unimpeded, into a knight’s visor which had crumpled backwards, destroying the mans face.

But the circle closed, the Dorneish too canny and experienced to lose another man, Ser Mooton had taken blows and had to retreat back in a stumble, baulked of his prey - the standard of the princes Martell, the sun in splendour.

Ser Mooton saw the red-and-white liveried crossbowmen moving at the edge of his vision, limited as it was, and rounded on Connington, gritting his teeth while Connington sat on his horse. He’d even put his sword away.

“You cannot do this.” He declared, though his tone carried a note of pleading. Neither Ser Whent or Lonmouth would meet his eyes.

“I need lose no more knights.” Connington replied, as though that settled the matter. Most of the knights hadn’t even fought, they’d not had the chance, milling around outside the fight.

“We are the better men!” Ser Mooton yelled, his voice shaking. “By the great lord of battles, the warrior above, do you doubt this?”

“Not in the least, my friend. I simply fail to grasp it’s relevance. These men have their tricks - they have drunk dreamwine like assassins, or mushrooms and poppy like the northern berserks, or something like it. They intend to fight to the death, anyway. I see no reason then to give them any more of my knights to see it done.”

Ser Myles Mooton looked up at his old friend and wondered if he knew him at all. “I protested against this surprise attack. But I went along, because you were committed. But look! It was no surprise! They were warned, and their prince has slipped away - leaving a handful of very brave men to die.”

“A foolish choice.” He might have said amateurish, and that Ser Myles Mooton hadn’t protested all that hard, but he didn’t. “He will not get far. I will find him, Ser Mooton. But every second we delay he slips further away. So better this is resolved.”

Ser Myles Mooton spat. “Don’t you see? We have erred in this! He left these men not just to buy him time but to lure us into shame. Shame! He left good knights to prove that we were base. And so far, my friend, we have shown ourselves to be so.”

”The Prince of Dorne conspired and attempted to murder his liege. And now, his cause has been found wanting on the cause of battle. That is all.”

”Let me take my men.” Ser Mooton pleaded. “Let me fight them. Man to man, one to one. Until we have killed or taken them in honourable battle. We will. I know it. Please.”

Lord Connington motioned at the captain of the crossbowmen, who slid his foot into the stirrup of his heavy arbelast and spanned it. “Save your strength. You are to joust this afternoon. And you are wounded. I insist you retire.”

The crossbowmen were were just thirty yards from the tight circle of Dorneish knights. They saw them, but refused to believe their enemy could be so base. Some of them hurled insults.

A few carried to Lord Connington and Ser Mooton. Ser Mooton’s face darkened and grew mottled with rage. One of the Dorneish has a wine cup from somewhere. He held it aloft, visor up, and laughed as he drank. Others began to sing. They were big men, but men who were trained in singing as well as fighting, and their voices rose in harmony.

Connington rolled his eyes again. “You can fight the survivors, if it means that much to you.” Connington said. He turned in his saddle. “Loose!“

**Margaery**

The court had feasted, and in the Great Hall The King lay back in his imposing chair, a breathtaking figure in his padded clothes studded with pearls and diamonds, his magnificent sables, his breast and fingers sparkling with diamonds and rubies, and the scents of lender, jasmine and copper, along with a hint of the leather cases in which his linens were stored.

He had grown less introverted as the guests departed, and now, that only a few remained his habitual mask of reserve had almost entirely departed. His eyes were alive with anticipation - Jon Conningtons wife, who had the additional distinction of being the King’s favourite mistress, had planned an entertainment to offer him. It would be witty, for she was held to be the wittiest woman in a witty court.

That evening, The King listened to music with her and a number of ladies. Again he insisted that she play, and watched her rest the beautiful instrument upon her lap and strum it. Finally he was as he liked - apart, but surrounded by beautiful things and people. All was well with the world.

There had been no mention, or acknowledgement, of the treason that had taken place the night before. There had been no discussion either about what Lord Connington had done in response, or that, somehow, the Prince Oberyn had escaped.

No, the King had something else to fixate upon. The Court had been in Summerhall a month, and already he was thinking of his next move. He meant to depart on his Royal Progress immediately, or as close to immediately as could be arranged, before the rest of the planned festivities concluded.

As a decision it probably had little to do with the attempt on his life, and more his own temperament. The King could rarely stay in one place for more than a week or two at a time - even his beloved Summerhall could not hold him for more than a month; and then must begin the great upheaval of moving court, the carrying to another place his bed and all the artistic and carefully selected furnishings that he could not bear to be without.

He took a delight in watching these removals - so uncomfortable for everyone save himself, sitting in his chair, legs crossed, entertaining himself by throwing a smile at a pretty girl, making a witty observation if one occurred to him, giving a friendly admonition. He was usually gracious, ever demanding, often sardonic. He was king of all that he surveyed, born to admiration and flattery and taking them as a right. He was intellectual, ready to do any kindness so long as the cost to himself was not too great, and always ready to undertake an adventure.

It was almost a surprise when Jon Connington entered. For the first time in years he looked as though he belonged. The King's Hand looked revitalized, much younger than his forty or so years, and for the first time Margaery supposed she understood how he had once been the subject of sighs and romantic fancies, how he could be accorded as an equal of the prince in beauty.

Of course, it was in his favor that he'd just fought an engagement in armor, and a man never looked better than he did after just having fought in harness, which made his body seem as light as air, his movements at once graceful and precise. So she'd always thought, anyway.

"Has it been resolved?" Rhaegar asked him, preferring not to go into detail.

"Largely, your majesty." Jon Connington replied. "But have no fear, it will be settled."

"You did well, in acting so quickly. And I apologize, I believe I might have missed a meeting of the military council which you assembled to advise me last night. Did I?"

Jon Connington nodded.

"Ah - so much fills the hours when can any man find a moment to spare? I am fortunate to have you. Was anything of importance discussed?"

"No." Jon Connington replied. "Nothing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter, the companion piece to the previous one I suppose. Feels more complete that way. I promise I'll get back to Jon in a bit.


	11. Jon, Ivor, Elia, Tyrion

**Jon**

Jon turned his horse with a gentle clicking in his cheek and a twitch of the reins. It was a beautiful day for riding, despite the dark clouds on the horizon that promised a building storm. They'd made eighteen miles the day before, not bad for a start after midday, and twice that today, perhaps a little more. His father was rightly famed for the speed in which he could move his troops -he'd famously once marched them two hundred miles in just four days, but most travelers were content for thirty a day - twenty in the winter.

And Winter seemed to come early to The Vale, or so it seemed to Jon. Their party rode at a leisurely pace through the rolling hills, the fields and farmlands bathed in the deepening glow of the late day sun. The raised road that they followed skirted the edge of a grand and ancient forest, it’s shadows darkening by the minute. A lonely thrush sang from within the wood.

Merchants and travelers dragged their carts off the road and into the mud as the knights of their escort rode past them four abreast, with banners and pennants fluttering on pikes above their heads. Farmers and traders stood with bowed heads and their doffed their shapeless hats, pressing them into their chests when they saw the moon and falcon, some of them even cheered in the wind and cold. Women bobbed curtsies and small, grubby children clung wide-eyed to their stained skirts. Many had likely never seen Elbert before, and were staring in open astonishment at the richness of his clothes and the magnificence of his horses saddle and trappings. It all seemed halfway contrived to Jon, like a display put on for their benefit, but he kept that thought to himself.

They continued, the landscape growing more desolate as they did. The great pines were twisted by the prevailing winds, the steep hills strewn with heavy boulders even on the road, that slowed their progress down.

His father and mother were riding together, and Edric and Steffon were further towards the back, catching up. Snatches of conversation came to him, but he made no effort to follow the discussion. Which is why he was startled by the shouts.

"My lord! Look! Smoke! Over to the left!" One of the knights, with nine stars on his dark shield, cried out suddenly, pointing to the south.

The company halted immediately, Elbert reining in his horse and peered in the direction of the knights outstretched finger. Sure enough, many miles away on the distant horizon, thick black smoke rose in a column until it seemed to reach and be absorbed by the heavy, cinereous clouds. He frowned.

"Never a dull moment." Elbert said in a disparaging tone of voice, then lifted his hand. "Well, another fine example of the work of those murdering bastards from Saltpans, I'll warrant!" His expression, which Jon had only ever seen as amiable and enthused began to take on a thunderous aspect. Without giving a word of instruction, he turned his horses head in the direction of the steep, gravel-strewn path that led towards the column of smoke, and spurred it into a trot, his knights wheeling around to follow.

The Stormlanders looked in askance at their lord, who shook his head, almost fondly. "Well, you heard him." Robert shouted, patting his huge Percheron’s neck. Unlike his escort, he wasn’t dressed for battle, but the against brigands that was unlikely to matter. "Shall we about it?"

Jon's throat felt dry and his heart lurched with something between anticipation and fear as the great body of fighting men headed in the direction of the smoke. He had been brought on this expedition for his first taste of battle. Perhaps it would come sooner than he had believed.

 

**Ivor**

“Ivor, lad, go tell your mother I won't be much longer. We'll have this dug up yet."

Ivor grinned at his father, squinting up through the unkpempt fringe of brown hair that was always falling into his hazel eyes. He'd been worked like a mule all day and was tired from it, but he could still manage to grin.

His rough homespun tunic, tied around the waist with twine, and the dun-colored leggings, also bound with twine around his calves and ankles, did little to keep out the cold blasts of wind that blew down through the valley. His feet were encased in badly fitting, patched old boots that had belonged to many in their time before coming to him, and his hands were tough, chapped and ingrained with dirt. He was a hardy if rather skinny lad of eleven, and had never once in his life known the comfort of warm, serviceable clothes, good boots or a full belly. He worked hard helping his father to wrest a meagre living from the poor patch of land that surrounded the hovel and barn, which nestled at the base of a rocky outcrop.

"I can help." He said, because his father had taken the worst of it all day, and looked like another effort might be the end of him.

"That's good, because you will. As soon as you've done as you are bid. Your mother can't wait for us all day, not if we're to have any hot food tonight." Jad reminded his son. "So get off with you, lad."

Ivor didn’t protest further. It was hard, back-breaking work scratching a living on what was effectively the frontier, the extent of settled lands beyond which were the Mountains and those who lived in their shadows. Times had been better some years ago when they'd had a cow, a sow and her litter and some sheep and goats, but they'd all been taken from them. All that was left now were a few scrawny chickens, Ivor thought bitterly.

He found his mother in their hovels single room, where she sat at a bench scraping and chopping the few vegetables she'd bullied from the stony garden patch beside the barn earlier. The smoke from the fire had blackened the squat stone walls; the floor was strewn with reeds gathered from the edge of one of the many streams that coursed down the valley. The one small, unglazed window let in little light and the air was dank and chilly. A pile of dried bracken in one corner served as a bed for them all, with a few sacks as bedding. Rushes dipped in animal fat gave them scant light at night for even cheap tallow candles were beyond their means.

His brother and sister were with her, doing their best to pull their weight. That didn't amount to much, Jon (everyone was named Jon in those days) was six and Margaery (Meggy as he called her) was five, and between them they could about be trusted to hold something for a few minutes. But everyone had to pull their weight, that was that. Even if you were five or six.

"Vegetable broth, and I've got a few handfuls of barley to thicken it, but that's the last of it." his mother informed him when he passed on his fathers instructions. She sighed heavily. It wasn't much for the only hot meal of the day - barely enough to keep body and soul together, and no coarse bread to go with it. "Will you go out and try to snare us a coney, Ivor?"

He nodded with the solemnity some elven year olds are capable of. "I will, Ma, just as soon as I've helped Da finish this trench." He grinned at her, pushing the hair out of his eyes. "You hear that, Meggie?"

Mara smiled tiredly at her son. He was a good lad, resilient in the way some children were, he worked hard and seldom complained, and could manage to smile. But her own smile was less dependable and faded, replaced by a worried frown creased her brow as she heard shouts coming from outside. "Ivor…" she started to say, getting to her feet and pulling her coarse wool shawl tightly around her thin shoulders.

But he was already outside, forgetting that travelers were few and not always welcome. He cried out as he saw the band of mounted men emerging from the track and heading rapidly toward the cottage. "Da! Da!" He called, until his father emerged and stopped cold. Jed's thin, sallow face was flushed with anger but there was fear, too, in his eyes.

There were six of them, mounted on small, shaggy ponies. He knew them all well enough. They were villainous looking, their hair and beards long, with jerkins over woolen shirts. Three of them wore cloaks of a green and brown woven tartan over their jerkins and they were all armed with knives and swords. They drew a halt a few paces away, and two of them dismounted. The bigger and more thickset of the pair grinned at Jad, revealing inexplicably white, even teeth. A jagged scar ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear, and the patchy beard he'd grown to cover it had failed to do the job, or much of any job.

"Good day. I can see that you're engaged, but it be time for your dues." He announced in a chirpy, singsong voice quite at odds with his appearance.

"And what be they?" Jad asked sullenly.

"Why, as if you don't know! Same as the taxes you pay for use of the land to Ser Dacre, you pay the black tax for our protection! You owe us for our brave hearts and bold blades, and should the clansmen take a mind to come this way, you'll be glad of us then, and that you paid us."

"There’s no one whose seen any clansmen in these parts! Not in two years or more!" Ivor shouted, stepping closer to his father and wishing he had some sort of weapon, if only a heavy bit of wood that might make a serviceable club. He hated these men, as did his father and mother, as did little Meggie and Jon, and every other poor farmer and laborer for miles. Because of them, there was never enough food or money, all went cold and hungry and had to break their backs working just to exist. They were thieves and brigands and were nowhere to be found whenever the Mountain Clansmen did come reaving and burning and killing any who got in their way, before driving all the livestock back up into the mountains along with the women too slow to outrun them.

The man uttered a harsh laugh. "That's just it, lad. There aren't no clansmen, for they know we're here to protect you."

Jad gripped his shovel all the harder. "We cannot pay. We have nothing."

The man took a step forward, his pretense of good humor evaporating, the chirpy singsong tone deepening to a tone more in line with his appearance. "Nobodies too poor to be worth killing, didn’t you know? And the last harvest before winter comes is gathered, I know the days as well as you."

"And what little we had that wasn't spoiled by the rains went to pay the tithes on the land! You took all the sheep and goats the last time you came this way. We have nothing to tide us through winter!"

"It's the truth!" Ivor added, glaring at the man, and noticing for the first time that he wore two rings, one gold and one silver, on his dirty fingers.

The other men had now dismounted and with a jerk of his head their leader dispatched them in the direction of the house and barn. "Take whatever is in the barn, and the chickens, then search the house. Dig up the floor, pull down the thatch. That's where the coins will be hidden."

"No! I tell you, we have nothing!" Despite his fear, Jad raised the shovel like a staff. He couldn't let them take what little they had, but the thickset man was quicker. He grabbed Ivor and held a dagger to the boy's throat.

"You fucking lower that now, or I'll stick him like a pig." He growled.

Jad dropped the improvised weapon without so much as a momentary hesitation and Ivor was let free and ran to him. Jad and Ivor both felt a moment's relief, but it was eclipsed by the numbing despair. They would take their precious few sacks of corn and oats that were stored in the barn. Crops they'd labored hard to grow and harvest and save. They would be left to starve through the winter.

Every man has a point where they can't take any more, and Ivor had reached his. Blind fury swept over him all at once, and he lunged for the shovel his father had dropped and lashed out at his tormenters. "You are worse thieves and brigands than the Clansmen! You're cowards! Filthy - " He caught the man on the shin, an ineffectual blow deflected by the thick leather boots, and then cried out as his head seemed to explode in pain and he was sent sprawling to the ground. He tried to sit up but a heavy boot slammed into his side and he pitched forward groaning.

As he lay there trying to gather his wits he could hear the shouts of the brigands as they ransacked the cottage and then, finding nothing of value, began to tear down the roof thatch. He could hear his mother screaming and his brother and sister howling in terror. Despite the dizziness he dragged himself up to his knees. He had to do something.

He heard the thickset man bellowing at his father.

"There's nothing left to give you. Have pity - don't destroy the house. We'll die without shelter." His father begged. The thickset man wasn't moved.

"You'll die if you don't pay me what you owe!" The thickset man retorted, and struck him across the head with the flat of his swordblade. Jad staggered and fell to his knees.

Through a haze of pain and fear Ivor saw his father try to rise only for the bigger man to press a boot on his chest and beat him. His father's efforts were hopeless, the other man was much heavier and stronger, but his resistance goaded him to a fury, and savagely beat him to the ground.

Ivor hauled himself to his feet. swaying as waves of nausea washed over him. If he could just get to the shovel which lay forgotten a few feet away…

Then he was knocked flat on his back again by a fist smashing into his belly. He rolled over, fighting for breath. The blow had winded him, but he could still see. He could make out the figure of his mother beside the door of the cottage, bending over two sobbing children, but then she uttered a shriek of terror as three men seized his father and began to drag him towards the barn.

"Hang him." The thickset man commanded. "It'll teach those who try to squirm out of paying."

Still screaming, his mother moved. The thickset man turned a little as one of them lashed out and caught her a vicious blow across the side of her face, sending her sprawling into the dirt, the blood spurting from her nose and lip.

Ivor tried to stand.

There are times when heroism is invisible; when the effort required to do what you know to be right is more than your frame can bear. Ivor had taken two bad hits. He knew his father needed him. He knew his mother needed him. And little Meggy, and Jon.

And yet, he found himself lying there, unable to bring himself to stand, no effort of will enough to do more then squirm a little. He all but ordered himself out loud, to stand. To do something. To do anything. And yet he lay there, while his brother and sister were on their knees beside his mother, wailing hysterically. He heard his father's desperate pleading, and saw his face, bloody and bruised, one eye already swollen and half-closed.

Lights danced before his eyes and he could taste blood in his mouth. There was nothing he could do except lie in agony and watch.

They bound both of Jad’s arms behind him. His feet were tied, and one of them put a rope around his neck and threw the end over a roof beam. They were all shouting and swearing and laughing and slowly Ivor dragged himself away. When he reached the doorway he pulled himself up and sat clutching the doorpost, his bleeding, broken fingernails digging into the wood. His chest heaved painfully as sobs convulsed him and he was blinded by tears. He was powerless to do anything at all to save his father, and mingled with the horror and grief was impotent fury at his own helplessness.

He didn't know how long he crouched there, dazed and crying, but eventually his mother's voice, shrill with hysteria, penetrated his numbed mind. He looked up. Her eyes were wild, her face contorted, tears were coursing down her cheeks mingling with the blood from her nose and mouth.

“Ivor? Ivor? Help me. Help me to… to cut him … down, lad. Please, you've got to help me. Please. They've set the house and barn alight." She pulled frantically at his arm.

He struggled to his feet, drawing the sleeve of his tunic across his streaming nose and eyes. Between them they managed to get Jad’s lifeless body down and Ivor knew he would never forget the sight of his father's bloated and battered face. They dragged him outside for flames were licking at the dry timber of the roof beams and dense smoke was filling the barn.

It what had been the vegetable patch, now trampled and rutted by hooves, Mara sank to her knees, clasping the body of her husband to her, rocking to and fro, keening in her terrible anguish. Ivor staggered towards the cottage but stopped before he'd managed two steps, it was too late, and he sank on to his haunches in the dirt. They were all as good as dead - there was no shelter, no food, and no father to work the land.

He didn't hear the riders approach. It was the shrill cries of his brother and sister that finally made him aware that they were no longer alone. Had they come back to finish their work? Had they decided to murder them all? His feelings of fatalism were forced aside by a surge of fury. He turned, intending to kill them all with his bare hands or die in the attempt.

There were perhaps twenty, though more arrived every moment. They all wore armor and swords, some carried lancers, and were without exception big men, excepting a boy around his age, and a woman. But most of his attention fell upon a tall, thin man in pale clothing, with blond hair and a beak of a nose. He dismounted, his expression some strange combination of reserved and furious. "Whose doing was this?" He asked, taking in the scene before him - the cottage, now a smoldering ruin; the small barn still burning fiercely although the roof had collapsed; the woman half sitting, half lying on the ground, cradling the lifeless form of a man with her face covered in dried blood; two young, dirty, terrified children clinging to each other; and finally the young lad, also bruised and bloody and half demented with grief and terror.

"Have courage, lad." Came the deep voice of the largest of the riders, the biggest man he'd ever seen, with a black beard dressed in gold and sable. "This is Lord Arryn, and he'll see you right, if you let him."

The tall man's expression softened a little, though only a little, as he took in the boy's appearance. "Mountain Clansmen, or reavers and bandits?" He asked simply.

Ivor nodded, gazing up through his tears at the lord. "They… they came this morning and said we had not paid the dues for protection against the mountain clansmen, but they'd already taken the sheep and goats. Da…" He drew his sleeve across his eyes, fighting down sobs.

The woman dismounted, and walked over to Ivor’s mother. She was a great lady, he could tell, she must have been, as well as the most beautiful he’d ever seen. "Mistress, have you kinfolk hereabouts?"

At her voice, Mara raised her battered and swollen face and nodded. "At Holystone. A hamlet some miles distant. My younger brother." She sniffed out.

The woman nodded. "Then pack what little there is left. We will bury you're man and lend you a horse to take you safely to them." She dropped a small bag into Mara's lap. "This will tide you over through the winter."

Ser Guyard Morrigan dismounted at once, and led his horse over to you. "It'd be my pleasure, milady." He said, bowing as politely as if he'd been adressing Lord Arryn's wife, rather than some peasant woman.

"Da told them there was nothing left." Ivor was saying. "They… they said he lied, but it were true! It were true, we had nothing. They beat him. I tried to help, but…"

The thin man patted him on the shoulder. "They would have killed you two, lad. Leave justice and retribution to me."

"What's your name, boy?" The big man asked.

"Ivor. My name's Ivor, Ser."

"How old are you, Ivor?"

"I'm eleven Ser. Twelve soon."

"And you would have your father avenged?"

Ivor nodded, finding a spark of courage. "Give me a sword, sir?" He begged. "And let me ride with you?"

The big man paused, looking him over. He wore red boots, and golden spurs, and thick fabric in a gown, a long garment both because it was warm and to display his wealth, but was as clearly a fighting man as all his armoured knights - he made most of them look as callow as milkmaids. "You haven't the strength to lift a sword, lad, and wouldn't know what to do with it if I gave you one. Still, you may ride with us. That's not a thing I'd deny any man. Jon, take the lad behind you. If we hasten we can catch up to them, Elbert." Robert was impressed with the boy's courage and spirit, qualities not often found in the poor peasant classes, who had subservience taught to them with their mother's milk.

Ivor’s mother struggled to her feet. "Ser! Your Lordship, he be only a child! He is all that's left to me, and the bairns can do nought for themselves!"

Robert Baratheon eyed her. "You will not be left destitute by his absence, goodwoman. As for him, a place will be found, In Arryn's household or in mine, you have my word. And the brigands will pay for what they did to you. You have my word on that, too."

Elbert nodded. "And mine. Mount up! There's little time to spare."

Almost before he realized what was happening to him, Ivor was hoisted into the saddle and for the first time in his life was astride a horse. It was an experience that in other circumstances would have amazed and delighted him, as would the unheard of good fortune at having found a place in a noble's household, but all he felt was a sense of relief as he clung tightly to a man not much older than he and rested his bruised and aching head against the man's heavy riding cloak. Relief, and a burning desire to see justice done.

 

**Jon**

When they had ridden into the small, smoky clearing Jon had taken it in at a glance, shocked at the destruction that had been left behind. He was sickened at the violence. The family was desperately poor, that much was obvious - his father's horses and hounds were better housed than this woman and her children, and as the story emerged as to what had happened that day, he felt pity for the poor boy who had been so badly beaten trying to protect his family. Yet it was still a surprise to have the lad placed in his charge.

When they had ridden into the small, smoky clearing Jon had taken it in at a glance, shocked at the destruction that had been left behind. He was sickened at the violence. The family was desperately poor, that much was obvious - his father's horses and hounds were better housed than this woman and her children, and as the story emerged as to what had happened that day, he felt pity for the poor boy who had been so badly beaten trying to protect his family. Yet it was still a surprise to have the lad placed in his charge.

Jon dragged on his reins and brought his horse to a halt. He pulled the collar of his heavy sable-lined cloak up around his ears and then reached out to pat the neck of his horse, who was becoming restless, pawing at the ground with an iron-shod forefoot. He glanced around at the knightly escort who waited with him, whose horses were likewise restive, metal bits and curb chains clinking and jangling as heads were tossed and their breath rose like steam from a cauldron into the cold air. The knights had a grim look about them, their weather-beaten faces hard beneath thick hats, open helms and hoods of chain-mail.

Frowning, he tried to sit taller in his saddle. Robert sat in his saddle beside Elbert, fidgeting with a golden coin - a medallion of unusually large size and uncomfortable edges that held his cloak and was currently rubbing against his neck. His wife and two younger sons had been herded to the back, away from the scene of violence. But once it was clear there was no danger, at least in the immediate sense, Lyanna had led them to it and bid them see for themselves.

Their escort divided, leaving two men to bury the murdered farmer and another to escort his widow and children to their kinfolk. A further score would accompany Lyanna, Edric and Steffon back to the main road, and await the rest of the party to join them. She didn't protest, if anything she looked the slightest bit relieved - though Jon suspected this was more the chance to finally get Steffon alone than at escaping the violence that had been done and the violence that would follow.

Jon looked at the lad. He was of an age with Edric, or so he thought, the lad was small and that was a word that could never be applied to Edric. Still, he was brave, and he was glad that the lad was going to have a chance to make something of himself. He realized that the boy was staring back at him, and paused. Conversation had never come easily to him.

“You alright?” He offered at last, inadequately. The boy shivered but didn’t reply, obviously knowing a stupid question when he heard it.

Jon began to shiver: the raw dampness was making his bones ache again. Then he frowned. Here he was with warm clothes and a fur-lined cape, leather boots and gauntlets. The lad only had a thin, homespun tunic and breeches, which offered no protection at all against the cold.

They rode on in silence and as the last light of the afternoon began to fade the craggy outline of the hills surrounding the valley came into view, and Elbert signaled that they should stop again, raising an arm.

"Well, there is a veritable army of us." He said. It was true, three score knights in harness and on warhorses would have been excessive against an entire Mountain Clan, much less a small band like the one described. "More than are needed. A few of us shall go on - we do not want to reveal our presence and scare them away."

Robert was one of the men, as was he, and Edric, at Elbert's insistence. Otherwise the Stormlanders held back. Jon road beside his father as they followed Elbert, with Ivor riding pillion behind him, through the narrow pass. They proceeded slowly and cautiously down, and when they reached it's foot and entered the valley Elbert ordered the knights to dismount and and to work their way on foot to the further end of the gully that lay ahead. He watched them disappear into the gathering dusk, and then urged his horse on. Jon glanced at Ivor once again. The cold and the rigors of their journey seemed not to have affected him, and he was a little disconcerted to see the boys face was now a cold mask of fury. He felt the sweat break out on his forehead and the thunderous anticipation he'd felt earlier was back with a vengeance, sharpening the air.

They had ventured a few hundred yards into the gully when Elbert again halted them. Ahead, Jon could see the orange glow of flames that came from a camp fire. Shadowy figures were grouped around it.

"Stay here. Keep the boy with you and keep him silent." Robert told him.

Sound carried clearly in the cold air and the clatter of the war horse's hooves on the stony valley floor caused the outlaws to get to their feet, snatching up their weapons and peering into the gloom.

"We have a visitor and a fine bird with fine feathers." One of the men, heavy-set and stocky so that he seemed smaller than he was. The man had a distinct air of bellicosity and belligerence. His beard was patchy in places, and broken by a disfiguring scar.

"Alone too. Easy pickings." His closest companion replied as he reached over for his swordbelt. Then stopped.

Elbert was much closer now, and the thickest man hesitated, he was cannier than he looked, even drunk. Canny enough to notice the size of the mount, the colours worn and the harsh gleam of castle-forged steel in the dark. "Hold. What fool would come here alone after dark? Here?"

"Perhaps he's lost his way."

"Halt stranger." The man called, as though his earlier words hadn't carried in the night for all the world to overhear.

Elbert did not draw rein, but carried on towards them in silence, grim and implacable as the spectre of death.

The thickset brigand began to grow apprehensive as he approached, perhaps picking up on the incongruity of Elbert Arryn's appearance and grasping that he was no ordinary wealthy traveler as he had initially assumed. The saddle and the trappings of the horse - a horse such as he'd only seen before in woodcuts and carvings of knights - and the man's clothes were of a magnificence he'd never seen before and denoted someone of more importance than a wealthy merchant.

At last, Elbert drew to a halt before them. "Well? Nothing of substance to say for yourselves? Think it's your right to burn and pillage and murder at will?"

The leader of the group was so thrown aback by the accusations that he found himself lying to the man who moments ago he'd conspired to rob and then murder, not necessarily in that order. "We be peaceful, honest men!" He protested warily.

Elbert leaned forward in his saddle and the horse moved a pace closer, tossing it's head and pawing the ground with it's forehoof. "And I say you are a liar. Just as you said about yeoman Jad, before you murdered him."

"No. No! We've never met nobody by that name. We be honest men!" Again the thickset outlaw protested but his men had begun to grasp what was taking place on some primitive level, and were unconsciously drawing closer to each other.

"I don't believe you." A dozen of the knights, dismounted and with drawn swords stepped into the firelight and at the stark horror at their situation they huddled together, their faces ashen, all pretense of bravado and innocence gone.

"My lord, have pity. Have pity!" one cried, falling to his knees.

"You beg for pity? By the Great Lord of Battles, you are little better than cringing dogs!" Elbert shouted into their faces, his cloak falling open to reveal his house sigil. There could be no doubt at all that they knew then who they had met, and their terror was complete. "What pity did you show to this man Jad or his family?"

Two of them turned and tried to run. One got a heavy sword pommel in the teeth from one of the knights, the other got a knee in the fork between his legs, bowing him over. Elbert hadn't even stirred.

"A trial then. It be the law, milord." The leader begged. "Any free man can demand justice under the law."

"Fancy yourself under the protection of the law? You, who have such scant respect when it is not you who it protects? Very well, a trial then." He dismounted, and drew his long sword. The man flinched. "There is a witness to the murder and pillage you committed this day, who you let live. He told me his story, and so I have hunted you down. Produce the boy, bring him forward."

Jon rode to Elbert Arryn's side, and he turned to him. "Are these the culprits, Ivor?"

Ivor was shaking with anger, and hatred burned in his eyes. "these be the ones, milord. Those three hanged my father, and it were by his command. See, he wears two rings on his right hand. I remember them well."

Elbert nodded. "I'm convinced. Hang them."

The thickset bandit, in desperation that could almost pass for courage, drew his sword as the other three still standing were seized, tied and dragged screaming and struggling towards a gnarled and misshapen hawthorn tree. "Wait!" One of them yelled, and another "please!", but Elbert was unmoved.

Nobody moved to stop the thickset man who moved towards Elbert, his sword held in front of him. Elbert shook his head, then began walking towards the man, shifting his grip on his own riding sword as he did. He flicked his sword up into an overhead garde and threw a cut that the man desperately covered with a clumsy rising swing. Only Elbert's swing was only a feint, and his sword flicked around and cut deeply into the man's unprotected neck, killing him instantly with contemptuous ease. Elbert hadn’t so much as broken stride.

Jon had barely watched. His eyes were on the other men who had been sentenced to death. They did not die well, coughing and choking, their eyes bulging, their faces turning black. Ivor was watching as well, with something between pain and satisfaction. It took an effort to look away.

"Bring the others forward." Elbert commanded.

Two knights manhandled the fallen men, who had obviously hoped that by staying still and quiet they'd escape further notice. They were crying with fear and terror, and kept glancing at the corpse at Elbert's feet, and the three lifeless bodies hanging from the boughs of the hawthorn.

"You are but a few of the craven blackguards who infest this place. That you do such not half a says ride from my own home is no small embarrassment, but though your complicity and involvement in the crime is clear you will escape death. Instead you will remind those in this valley that the King's Justice is still enforced here. Hold forth your right hands!"

One man protested, but the others were silent and trembling. None of them moved to obey Elbert's command until a knight seized the pair of them roughly, and forced them to the ground, and at a nod from Elbert severed the hand of each man in turn.

Jon couldn't keep himself from flinching as their screams filled his ears and the blood poured from their wrists wile the severed hands twitched on the ground beside them. Justice was never pretty to watch. Ivor was sitting on the ground a few feet away, his arms outstretched around his head, his shoulders shaking. Slowly and stiffly Jon dismounted and went to him. The boy's obvious misery came almost as a surprise, until he remembered the first time his father had brought him to see an execution.

Ivor looked up at Jon's unexpected wordless support. "I did think I would be glad to see the end of them, but it doesn't and I don't know why. It doesn't take away the…" He struggled to put his conflicting emotions into words. The death and mutilation of those who had tormented his family could not reverse what had been done.

One of the knights dismounted. "It's grief, lad." He explained, to Jon and not to Ivor. "Hell need time to accustom himself. Let me take care of him for a bit. There's nothing left for us to do here, and we still have a long ride." Jon nodded gratefully, although he helped Ivor up, and he walked back to where the horses stood waiting. He noticed that the tasselled ends of the yellow and black caparison were muddy and stained, but it was of small matter, and couldn't have been helped. The gelding was named Traveler, it stood seventeen hands high with wide shoulders and powerful muscles that could carry his weight without effort, but it didn't have the temperament to be a warhorse. He glanced back at the two moaning figures on the ground. "Will they…?"

"They'll live." The knight said. He'd have hanged them all, they deserved nothing less, but only in his heart would he disagree with Elbert's command. "Not that you need ever think of them again. You will both be better for a hot meal, a good fire and a night's rest."

Jon nodded. He already missed the inn they'd spent the night at. And then he made a decision. "My father means to go to war in the North. I shall ask him that you may serve as my squire, Ivor."

"What be a squire, milord?" Ivor asked, surprised.

"A servant." The knight replied before Jon could.

Ivor was confused and perturbed. "I be county born and bred. I be unused to the ways of gentlefolk."

"You can learn." The knight said, but Jon only shook his head. "In my family, that won't make much difference. Count on that." It was a small kindness, perhaps, but there was more than enough room for another servant in his father's household, Jon thought. The boy had had so little, and this day had seen him robbed of both his father and his home. He was a brave lad, and he deserved some good and a chance in life.

 

**Elia**

Elia sat in the candlelight shed from her candle, in the driest part of the black cell, brushing her hair. Against all reason, she looked singularly lovely in the candlelight - when she was laughing and dancing with her husband or his gallant knights she could pass for ten years younger, but when she was still and thoughtful, she remained as beautiful as a statue of the Maiden. She was small and frail and delicate and she held her head as few women did - up, with a direct gaze. Her face grew sharper and more elegant every year, as age and anxiety wore her prettiness away to real beauty. Sorrow had given her strands of silver that wove their way through her midnight black hair which only served to make it shimmer lustrously, and the grief that had made her quieter and more thoughtful gave her huge black eyes depths that they had not possessed before.

But the real woman had never been as vivid as the vision in Rhaegar's mind, and when he'd touched her and found her to be flesh and blood, not dreams and promises, his love had died at once. Her own had taken long enough that it had been years before she noticed her absence.

For prisoners of her rank, whatever their crimes, it was the normal custom to provide a decent lodging - Baelor the Blessed had seen to it the sisters he had locked away for fear that they may tempt him with their beauty lacked nothing but male companionship, and early on she had been afforded at least the appearance of such courtesy. At first she'd had a small apartment, with ladies - not her own, who had been dispersed and sent away, married off or otherwise dispensed with, but by others chosen by her husband's Lord Hand. Then she'd been moved to a smaller room, that had been locked and remained so at all hours, and they'd been dispersed as well, replaced with a collection of septas, spinsters, maiden-aunts and spies for one faction or another, all watching her every moment and trying to find some way to use her to their advantage.

However as time passed Rhaegar - who still professed to love his wife, had stopped visiting entirely, than taken all of it away a piece at a time until she had found herself all alone in this low and narrow prison, in the new buildings he had had constructed to the right of the Maidenvaul, which only received daylight from ground-level. Compelled, under pressure from the Court, the Faith and even the common people, to keep up the pretense, at least, of their marriage until someone could find him a way to squirm free of it, the King seemed to have good hopes that this unhealthy prison cell, this dungeon in which her head touched the ceiling, would in the long run perform the executioner's office for him. That would suit him well, she would be dead leaving him blameless.

And, indeed, though Elia Targaryen of Dorne, Princess by birth and queen by marriage, who was now forty one years of age, it had been more then she could to endure the miserable prison, the five months of fog pouring in through the low window and rain trickling down the walls, the oppressive, stagnant, stifling heat at the bottom of her hole, the conditions would be enough to break anyone, in the long run. If not for Ser Arthur, she feared she would have gone quite mad.

Now Summer was over, and she was still in her cell. And she had no choice but to accept she would likely die in it.

The sun, the sun her family had taken as their own, had set not two hours ago. It was dark, outside her cell.

It was dark within it, saving the presence of the candle.

In the candlelight she was singing by herself, to herself. It was a hymn - of all things - 'Gentle Mother', which was supposed to have been written by King Baelor Targaryen, Baelor 'the Blessed' as he existed in popular imagination. That poor, gentle king had hoped it might be the beginning of the thing he had searched for all his life, the thing he alone had believed might exist, might be there to be found if only one looked for it. He had hoped it might be a cure for war, and perhaps, in a small way, it had been, or at least the beginning of one.

But Elia was not thinking about war, or about godliness, or about long dead kings. She was trying to understand what had befallen her, and why.

They’d been happy once, or so she had thought. Of course, they'd been married before either of them were twenty, and by then Princess Elia fancied herself in love with her husband, and what a painful time that had been for her. Looking back now, more than a score of years later, she felt a wry sympathy for that young summer-child, so innocent and starry-eyed. How could she not have been bedazzled by Rhaegar, so beautiful and unworldly, so perfect? He was tall and graceful, with long silver hair, compelling dark eyes that were sad and passionate and held secrets she'd longed to pry out of him; he was courteous, good-natured, he was well-educated and enchantingly clever, and everyone had adored him and so they had adored her to, shining in his reflected light. She’d felt herself so blessed, so fortunate that it seemed churlish to object or question what she had, at the notes about him that had sounded off, like a cracked bell.

Elia was still not sure when she’d fallen out of love with Rhaegar, assuming it had been love back then and not youthful infatuation. It may have begun after he had humiliated her at Harrenhal, but she did not think so - that was not the first time he had humiliated her, and had hardly been the last. She thought it more likely they had already long lost whatever it was that had held them together by then.

Her first misgivings had been little things. Not just about prince Rhaegar - which could be set aside, or his behavior - which had to be endured, but about his prudence and his political judgments - which could certainly not. He had refused to search for a match for their children, despite the crowns need to align itself with it's banner-men. In truth, he kept them the next closest thing to locked away in the castle, completely isolated from the world. Their son was a man now, by years at least, but was painfully unprepared to be king.

His father had pursued a very aggressive foreign policy to excellent effect, one motivated as much by revenge as ambition, but Rhaegar seemed reluctant to involve himself in anything that was not immediately in front of him. And so, under the light touch of his rule, the Seven Kingdoms had found itself subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant since the Dance of Dragons, and whom the prudence of Aegon 'The Unlikely' had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown and been held in an iron grip by King Aerys had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent, unopposed by the king completely. Before the Targaryen's time, there had been no law to speak of, except perhaps a basic and one-sided kind of 'gentleman's' etiquette' which was in any case reserved for the nobility. There still wasn't much that the powerful lords were obliged to ask the Crown's intercession upon, unless it impacted upon the rights of another Lord, but these days they never did.

And so all over Westeros those who were able had fortified their castles, increased the number of their dependants, and attempted to reduce all around them to a state of vassalage, striving by every means available to them to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable them to take advantage in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending. And the situation of the inferior gentry, the petty lords and landed knights who, by the law and spirit were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, was becoming steadily more precarious.

All the while he plotted festivities from his estate at Summerhall, ignoring that which was inconvenient. Just as she had, too, when she had still been able.

But a good marriage did not need love to flourish, of course, and anybody with sense knew better than to enter into matrimony with expectations of finding their romantic soul mates. Princess Elia had been given many reasons to be thankful that she was Rhaegar's wife over the years, and she had comforted herself with the knowledge she had been much luckier than the vast majority of women. She had two children whom she adored, bright and clever and talented and all that could be asked for in heirs to the throne, she had a number of close friends she knew that she could trust absolutely, and she had an opportunity to rule, since he had so little interest in it.

On reflection, she'd been more foolish then, then she had been as a girl who fancied herself in love.

Perhaps she was foolish now, when all she seemed to have reason to be thankful for was the brush that let her do that little to maintain herself, and Ser Arthur Dayne, with Ashara by extension. She maintained herself in the first place to defy the septon, her husband's creature, who spat at her and demanded she confess once a week, and told her she ought to be properly penitent, to wear a hair shirt and show piety, and scorn the vanity that had led her astray, secondly because there was little else to fill her time and it had been her habit as long as she had lived to brush her own hair, and finally, and above all, for her own morale, knowing well that if she yielded on this point, she would give way progressively to the physical deterioration that lay in wait for the prisoner, until she lost all will to live.

There was a grinding of locks and bolts on the low door of the queen's dungeon. The turnkey opened it, glanced inside, then admitted lady Florent.

All of her new ladies were plain, and Lady Selese Flornet was the plainest - and eldest. She wore a Seven-pointed-star big enough to hang on a wall and her dress was plain to the point of being frumpish, enough that even a well-to-do peasent's wife would scoff at the idea of wearing it. She wore dark colours and sometimes went even further in mimicking the styles of a septa to the point of wearing a wimple, although today she wore her mousy hair (where it wasn’t a drab sort of gray) in a more elaborate fashion - each plait was wound into a tight spiral at the base of her neck, creating a severe effect.

“Welcome, Lady Florent,” the queen said without enthusiasm. Courtesy wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was one of the few that remained to her.

“All this hair brushing is mere vanity,” Lady Florent snapped, an unstable intensity alight in her eyes, as well as the satisfaction of seeing something to disapprove of. Elia wondered if it made the woman feel strong, and found it in herself to pity her, at least a little. Lady Florent smoothed her skirts fastidiously, then sat on the bench that also served as Elia’s bed without asking permission. “I have brought you some religious instruction.” When Elia didn't respond, her lips pursed. "Or do you wish to confess?"

The queen frowned. “It is up to me to call for my servants, of which you are one. For the moment, at least, I am queen, and I have never been much for formality, but you may stand until I ask you to sit.”

“Do not give yourself airs,” Lady Florent replied, she was a game little terrier at the best of times. “You are a wife taken in adultery, and nothing else.” She remained seated. “My lord Jon Connington has sent me to attend you, and I shall. But do not pretend with me.”

Elia nodded slowly. “So you refuse my command,” she said.

Lady Florent was the widow of an important lord from the Westerlands, a Crakehall Elia believed, although she could be wrong. And Lady Florent certainly knew how to make herself obeyed. “I will accept any reasonable command,” she said sweetly. She was not a sweet woman, so the effort to be so was almost physical, like an earthquake. “Let me read to you from the Many-Pointed-Star. Lady Catherine of Andalos. Perhaps you will find the experience efficacious.”

“And if I do not wish you to read?” the Queen asked, already weary.

“You are unwomanly in your striving,” Lady Florent said. “A woman’s role is passive acceptance, as I told my husband on many occasions. Indeed, I was a byword for passive acceptance, and my husband always did his duty by me.”

“Duty?” Elia asked. "Somehow I don't doubt it. And so, if I passively accept my fate as deserved, the Seven will reverse things? My husband shall find me with my spirit broken pleasing, and shall be my lover once again?” the queen asked, mildly enough. “You mean that is the role of women, and I should abide it?”

“If you must,” Lady Florent said, with a shrug. “That’s men."

This time Elia didn’t have to force the pity. It came of it’s own accord, along with something else, something she had missed and made her feel herself once again. Defiance. “How dare you. You want me to creep away and foreswear myself because my husband would find it convenient? Well I shall not. You want me to surrender to save him the need of a fight? Well I shall not. You want me to retire and give up my children’s claim claim as rightful heirs to the throne? Well I shall not. Not in a thousand years. Not if you rack me to within an inch of my life.” She did not move, or raise her voice, yet Lady Florent was cowering before the force of her displeasure. “I am Elia Targaryen, Queen of Westeros! The King's one true wife and mother of his children. And I have suffered you enough for today. Get out.”

And as Lady Florent fled, Elia sighed, and wished it were still true.

 

**Tyrion**

There was something reassuring about Jaime’s feckless smile and overblown air of assumed dignity, in spite of his pallor and obvious injuries. It didn’t change the situation overly, but made it seem not so dire as careful consideration impressed. Tyrion sincerely wished this was a situation that a smile and air of self-possession could bring him through, but alas, it probably did more harm than good.

"Well, Jon Connington explained that he wants to keep you as a hostage to use as leverage against father.” Tyrion began, sitting down on the stool. The cell was cramped - chivalrous as it was to treat your captured enemies with courtesy, there had been no effort to do so here. “He was quite candid about it - and then he asked if he could count on me in regards to Dorne.”

Jaime didn’t respond. He wasn’t as bad as he looked, so Maester Qyburn insisted, after dedicating hours to patching him up. Still, he was in pain, and saving his strength. “Set Mooton is too afraid of father to want anything to do with that plan, and would rather make a lot of money out of ransoming you, your horse and your armour. The King doesn’t care one way or another - if anyone has even bothered to tell him you were captured.”

The king was preoccupied. He’d cheered for Baelor Hightower, who had flair and courage and physical strength, and with what had happened to Jaime and Oberyn (who seemed to have vanished with two hundred men) had ultimately been named champion. The King had not hoisted himself - increasingly his bad leg forced him to sit with the spectators, where he would be temperamental and restless.

When he did run a course, with his experience, his height and the weight of his armour, his superb horses and the steel of his temperament he usually won, though to avoid accidents he preferred to take to the lists against opponents he knew. But he never seemed to mind the expense and trouble.

“What a sad display, taking credit for that.” Jaime said, with feeling. “Typical of the man. You know, I ought to think of some insult, but I don’t think I have the imagination to figure out how to offend a man like that.” He indicated his injuries again. His armour had been excellent, and fortune had been with him - he would likely recover, in time. “Although, presumptive as it is of him to seize what ought to go to an arbalester, he can keep the armour - it’s Oberyn’s, which he was kind enough to lone me. I could hardly wear my own, could I? As for my horse, someone nicked her already.”

”If you had bore your own arms, they wouldn’t have shot you.” Tyrion retorted, rolling his mismatched eyes. Already it was hard to remember that a day ago they had feared his brother might not pull through, that he would die of his injuries.

”Well, maybe.” Jaime allowed, wincing as he began to shrug and then remembered that was a bad idea. “So what is his demand?”

”You pay him twice the weight of your horse in gold - forty thousand dragons, and publicly renounce the prince of Dorne’s cause.”

Jaime rubbed his chin, affecting a look of deep consideration, as though examining the proposal from every angle, then at last he seemed to come to a decision. “That number seems suspiciously round. Are you sure that’s two times the weight of my horse? Which horse does he mean, anyway?"

"That’s what he demands, whether it is or it isn’t.”

"In honesty, I’ve half a mind to refuse, just to see how he takes it. What do you think he’d do if I dared him to kill me?”

”Surrender custody of you too the king, who’d hold you until such a time as he and father can come to some agreement.”

Jaime nodded. “Rather takes the joy out of defiance. Very well. Pay the man.”

Tyrion looked at his brother steadily. "Is that all?"

“No sense in being ungracious, brother. Besides, just because I cannot think of an insult doesn’t mean I can’t shame them with my dignity and courtesy - maybe shame them with a glimpse of what chivalry is supposed to look like.”

“Well, good luck with that.” He paused a moment. "Why did you do it anyway? You hate Oberyn."

"More than any man I've ever met, with perhaps the situational exception of Ser Myles Mooton. But I figure I should leave that out, it might damage the credibility of what I'm trying to impress upon him."

"So why did you do a stupid thing like what you did?"

"Well I should think that was obvious. It was the right thing to do."


	12. Lancel, Ygritte, Jon, Steffon, King's men, Margaery

**LANCEL**

 

Knighthood had not made all that much of a difference to him as a person, he felt, as he walked companionably into the mess tent. Of course, it was hard to feel different when most treated you much the same as ever. There were boards laid on a trestles and long benches and boxes - now he had a place to sit closer to the head of the table, and wasn't expected to serve, but that wasn't much. It was warm, and there was food-piles of bacon in big, deep wooden bowls cut from tree burls, and bread fried in fat with egg on it; buttermilk and hot wine and tea, which many of them had gotten to like since coming here. This feast was a gauntlet tossed in their faces, Lancel knew, that they would not regulate their supplies. Huge wooden platters of food emerged from the kitchens to replace those emptied by guests-hot wine was produced, and passed around.

Unlike Tion, who was now his social inferior as well as his best friend (a paradigm shift that they hadn't managed to figure out and the two were doing their best to ignore until they did), he was no longer expected to wait on tables, but thanks to his name he was welcome to sit with the commanders. None of them listened to him, but he heard it all — just as every squire did. Tygett Lannister wasn’t afraid, but he was deeply worried, and while he tried to watch his words, every man knew how important Stannis' army - and his reputation and experience - were to them.

They (well, not Lancel personally) had fought a few skirmishes since, minor probing attacks testing the defences, but the mercenaries had been reluctant to commit, both sides understood that they were entrenched in a good position, and as long as they could hold onto it then they could whistle at the mercenaries and wait for Stannis to arrive. The atmosphere of the wait had changed. Of course, there was good reason for that - Lancel no longer curried horses, at least he wasn't obligated to, he still helped Tion often enough, as he had grown more and more aware just how much his duties had spared him from worrying about the future. He made an early decision not to cut ties with him. He was proud to be a knight of course, if not as much as he had expected to be, but as yet Lancel had no friends there - chivalry was a closed company. He had been assigned his own lance - two archers and a tough man-at-arms who had been a fighting man longer than Lancel had been alive. He was very experienced, and Lancel knew he was lucky to have him, and relied on him completely.

There was a hush when Ser Hosteen Frey came into the hall, fresh from fighting. He had a stocky build, over which he wore a suit of brigandine armour, belts of knives, crossbow bolts and other weapons encircling his waist and crossing his chest over the top of the armour. A heavy falchion sword swung from his hip. His face was partially obscured, the region above his upper lip hidden behind the rounded surface of his black steel helm and a visor no more than two fingers thick, leaving his receding chin uncovered. For a moment, most of the room stared, then everyone resumed eating. Lord Tygett Lannister didn't even glance up, still at his table with Septon Torbet, Ser Flement Brax and Ser Foote. Ser Burton Crakehall entered a moment after, pausing to talk to one of the men, clapped him heavily on the back, and then came and settled next to the knights, making the bench creak.

Lord Lannister coldly nodded at Ser Hosteen Frey, engaged as he was in a most interesting discussion on the breed and character of his favourite hounds, which he would not have interrupted for matters of much greater importance than a distant relative, and signed to him to take place at the lower end of the table, where, however, no one offered to make room for him. On the contrary, as he passed along the file, the men squared their shoulders, and continued to devour their supper with great perseverance, paying not the least attention to the wants of the new guest, and the very heathen auxiliaries, as Ser Hosteen drew near them, curled up their whiskers with indignation, and laid their hands on their poniards, as if ready to rid themselves by the most desperate means from the apprehended contamination of his nearer approach. But if he felt any insult at this treatment he hid it well, if anything he seemed to revel in it, his lips blooming into a small, supercilious smile. Eventually Ser Lyn Corbray found him space, and the two put their heads together.

Everything was fine, Lancel knew, except that Stannis hadn’t come. He couldn’t. He was the best soldier they had, the best here, but even he couldn’t get his army over the river. He was close enough that they could signal him, but they'd waited three days for him, and there was more wine drunk at every dinner in the Lord Lannister's pavilion, and by the third night, tempers were flaring and Ser Foote used the term ‘trapped’ in a sentence.

Henceforth he ate his meals alone.

On the fourth night, as Tion Frey and Rollam Westerling carved up some questionable venison, a messenger came in and reported that the the mercenaries had been reinforced. More men. More supplies. Still no sign of Stannis.

All conversation died.

Lord Tygett Lannister was wearing red, a deep and dark colour. Red doublet, red trousers, red boots with golden spurs. He didn’t always - that’s just the sort of crap men said - but that night he wore red with his three leopards passant embroidered in silk thread on his short surcoat, which was thrown back, and left in broad expanse a placard, not of holiday velvet and satins, but of steel polished as a mirror and inlaid with gold. He was the tallest man in the tent - or perhaps that’s just how Lancel would remember him, his great stature, which, from the length of his limbs, was not so observable when he sat, actually startled his nephew, as he stood.

"Well, my friends," he said, with the sort of calm he always seemed to possess in those moments, that Lancel envied as much as he admired. "That can only mean a single thing." He looked around. Lancel would have sworn to all seven gods that his eyes came to rest upon him. "And we have no choice. We must fight."

Of course they rose and cheered him, every one, honorable knights and cynics as one, united in common cause.

No one said, "Mother have mercy, they outnumbered us four to one before today."

No one said, "Seven have mercy, they’ve cut our retreat, and if we lose, we’ll all be taken or killed."

No one said, "By The Warrior, you'll lead us to our deaths!"

But for certain, each and every one of them thought those things.

 

**YGRITTE**

 

The water was cold, and made brown by peat and by recent rain. The hillside did not provide a great deal of cover: dried chaparral, small gullies, and outcroppings of exposed and weathered stone. Ygritte knelt alone at the side of the stream and washed her face, hands and the bleeding wound on her upper arm in the torrent. The water ran briefly pink where she had been. She cupped clean water in both palms, rinsed her mouth and spat out the iron aftertaste of blood. Then she stood. She was alone, save for the dozen arrows she carried, each painted red that the arrows might more surely kill those against who they were sent, each fletched with crow feathers. She wore another crow pinion in her hair, woven in at the left, hair that was otherwise loose and rain-damp, darkly and fiercely red with the same metallic golden glint at the ends that a bay horse shows in the sunlight. And she had a blood-wet knife, recently used, a knife of good steel forged somewhere far away, with secrets of the southerners. She had traded it, from one of the dark shipmen who raided their shores on occasion, the last time she had visited Hardhome, and paid the price he wanted for it without haggling. She didn't have any gold, of course, but she had given six sable pelts, a seashell on a string of river pearls and piece of amber as large as her thumb in exchange, and never regretted the trade.

Ygritte had killed before. Men and women too, old and young, and children too, sometimes, and horses and warhounds and just about everything it might cross a mind to kill. She had crept into Tormund's war party when she was still too young to earn her first kill, just thirteen, and had fought alongside her older tribesmen as fiercely as any thrice-blooded warrior. That was against the Rattleshirt, of course - over territory, and now he had the land they'd killed each other over back anyway and he was an ally, one of the big names that Tormund was trying to get to support him in his bid to become king.

A blue roan mare dozed in the shelter of a nearby beech thicket, haltered but not tethered and came to call, the horses feet bound in soft leather to protect them and dampen the sound of her progress. Mounted, she traveled North and a little east, moving up into the hills where the paths were safe, and she was not likely to be murdered for the clothes on her back. She passed the summit and its crown of upright stones, ancient menhirs marking a place of power, and a pathway of more menhirs, some of them fallen over or reduced to piles of rock. This was a wild place, the man whose blood she had washed off was the only living soul she had seen for days. But she wasn't alone. In the dark, beneath the surface of things, by the old secret ways, by the sunken roads and the tunneled forest tracks and the winding fen waterways, the messengers were going out, even as the King Beyond the Wall had promised. And by the same secret ways, the chiefs and war-captains were coming in, from their own people, and from the chariot warriors of the Southern Ice River Clans, who had spread along the coasts to their north and become bound by blood ties so that now they counted almost as one people. Almost, but not quite.

The rolling, grass-speckled foothills rose all around like the swells of a stone ocean. The peaks were pale fangs that jutted in the distance. There was snows here amongst the foothills, snow already, but only in the deep places where the shadows never quite lifted. And yet the sun shone on the hillside with deceptive warmth, tempting the unwary into believing that summer would linger awhile longer, that the snows and ice-edged winds would come late this year. To a people for whom winter meant early dark and salted meat, washing-water frozen in its laver and nights huddled around smoke-billowing hearths, that was no small blessing. Summer was a season of celebration, winter a time to endure.

If not for what she had seen, if not for what had come for her in the night, perhaps she could have believed it too. But she had seen, and she knew better.

The road, or track, ran most of the time along the high ridges of the hills or downs, and she could look down on either side upon the desolate marshes where the snowy reeds sighed, and the ice crackled. This was the North, where you could ride for days without seeing a fence, or another person. The whole North was like that.

At times there would be a moory marsh on one side of the ridge, and a forest of a hundred thousand acres on the other, with all the great branches weighted in white. At times she could see a wisp of smoke among the trees, or a huddle of buildings far out among the impassable reeds. It was evening, and the sun was setting when at long last it came into sight.

It was a high hill in a flat landscape of clay fields and dark marshes, and from the hill’s flat summit you could stare southwards across the wide river towards the misty land where Tormund ruled. A great hall, the famed Ruddy Hall stood on the hill. It was a massive building of dark oak timbers, and fixed high on its steep pointed gable was Tormund's symbol: an enormous bear skull, of size to a regular bear as a dire wolf was to a more common wolf, rubbed with charcoal under the eye sockets to make them stand out dramatically, and with blood splashed on it's forehead. In the dusk the lonely hall loomed black and huge, a baleful place. Off to the east there was a village beyond some trees and she could see the flicker of a myriad fires there. A knot of tension in her back eased, though she couldn't help but notice that there were less fires then there should have been.

Tormund had declared himself King, though he was not alone in that presumption. And too many had gathered to support him, too many for the guest-huts, too many to crowd within the Hall, and so the black horsehide tents were pitched in the in-pasture below the Ruddy Hall, and the great fires were made in the forecourt. The Weapon Court, it was called, named in honour of the tall black stone that stood there for the warriors to sharpen their weapons on in time of war.

Climbing the icy stairs of the Great Hall, she kicked against a pair of grand double doors with her boot. When there was no response she kicked at them some more, and when that failed to have any more effect then her first kick she shouted every obscenity she could think of, until at last the doors opened a crack. It took their guardian a moment to recognize her, and then the doors were thrown wide to admit her.

It was stiflingly hot inside and stank of sweat and charred meat. The feast was in full flow, and the general hubbub rose to the rafters. Three hundred warriors must have been feasting on the rush-covered floor of that high, gaunt hall on its damp hilltop. Three hundred raucous, cheerful men, bearded and red-faced, most of who were carrying weapons in their chieftain’s feasting-hall - something that would have been unthinkable even five years ago. Their clothes were ragged fur and half-tanned hides, but the heads of their spears, and the points of their arrows, and the blades of their rough-forged swords all shone bright and clean.

Three huge fires flared in the hall’s centre and so thick was the smoke that it stung her eyes, and she could not see the men sitting behind the long table at the hall’s far end.

Against the far wall was a raised platform, upon which half a dozen people feasted, seated at a long table perpendicular to the others in the room, allowing them an unobstructed view across the hall. The wall behind this table was hung with weapons, shields, severed heads, skulls and beast pelts of all description. They were all trophies won by the successive lords of the Ruddy Hall, since it had first been erected long ago, taken from other tribes, or from giants or from crows.

Tormund Giantsbane was old, indeed he was a year or two short of forty which made him an old man by any reckoning, but he looked formidable. He was tall, broad-chested, and had a flat, hard face, scarred cheeks and a full red beard. He was dressed in furs, though he had a thick gold torque at his neck and more gold about his wrists and forearms marked with runes, but no finery could disguise the fact that Tormund was first and foremost a warrior, a great bear of a warrior.

She hardly recognized the man sitting beside him, she was so used to the mask he wore made from a giant's skull that it had never occurred to her what he might look like without it. It was a bland face, clean-shaven bar a shadow of stubble, narrow-chinned, hollow cheeked and with a high broad forehead. His lips were thin and his sparse hair was combed severely back to a knot behind his skull, but the otherwise unremarkable face was made memorable by his eyes. They were pale eyes, merciless eyes, a killer’s eyes. He had a ragged fur round his great wide shoulders, and some big necklace. Fingerbones, Ygritte saw as she got closer. Men’s fingers, mixed up with flat bits of wood, strange signs cut into them.

He asked something, but Tormund ignored him. If anything, he looked relieved to have an excuse not to talk to his erstwhile ally - Rattleshirt was a weasel, he didn't have the chops to call himself king even if he had the support, but he knew what he was worth and meant to get it, and so Tormund had to put up with him, since he couldn't risk Rattleshirt supporting one of his rivals. Tormund would have ripped out his lungs if he didn't need him, she knew.

"You're back. Was starting to worry I'd have to get used to doing things for myself again." He grumbled affectionately, before getting to his feet, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her against him in a rough hug. "Well, you'll be wanting fire, and something to eat then." He continued, then bellowed "Somebody get her something to eat!" before she could respond.

Tormund would take it as a slight against his hospitality if she didn't gorge herself till her skin was tight as a drum. But Ygritte wasn't in the mood. "There ain't nobody still alive within a day's walk of the mountains." She told him.

He waved off the point. "It can wait. Eat first." Tormund said, gesturing to the tables.

"It can't wait…"

“Listen," Tormund told her. "I’m older than you and I’m smarter than you and I’m better lookin’ than you. I can drink a river of mead and still be thirsty for more, I can sing and fight better than anyone you've ever met, men tremble at my shadow and women swoon at my name."

She didn't quite roll her eyes. “And your point here is…?”

"When I say something, I have a good idea what I'm talking about. And I say it can wait. So it can wait. Eat something. When was the last time you ate?"

Ygritte didn't know, but wasn't about to admit that to him. "Mance Rayder" she tried again, fairly sure that the name would get his attention "wants to meet you. He has the Thenns doing what he tells them. He has the Ice-River clan, and the Hornfoots, the cave people, you're the only one left who can stand up to him."

Tormund nodded his head. "Well, Mance hates me, and I feel the same way about him." He grinned as though he’d just turned up to a wedding. That was overstating it a bit - they were enemies, but they'd only met once. Nobody knew much about Mance - 'cept that he used to be a crow. "What's he say about that, then?"

"He wants to meet you. On neutral ground, he says."

The Lord of Bones burst into laughter. It sounded like a pebble rattling around in a dry skull. “I used to say that also. Come to a neutral place, I would say, and then in the night we would rise up and kill them all. Those were the good days.”

Tormund grunted. He wasn't about to give Rattleshirt the satisfaction of him agreeing with him, but that was clearly the way his thoughts went as well.

"I think you should go."

"You do?"

"I do." She leaned close. "I saw what they pulled out of the mountain, before the dead came. Joramun's horn."

Tormund went very still. "You sure?"

"Of course I'm not fucking sure!" Ygritte replied. She wasn't much convinced that there was such a thing as a horn that would bring down the wall. She wasn't much sure that she liked the notion of trusting their lives to it's existence. But nothing made sense anymore, not since blue-eyed corpses had begun to gather, and whole villages had gone quiet and empty. And Tormund believed, believed in magical horns and miracles that could save them, and she supposed that there was some kind of a chance that the horn really existed - enough that she couldn’t just say no, however much she’d have liked to. “It was a huge fucking horn, that's all I'm sure about. But what else could it be? How many huge fucking horns could there be buried under the mountains?"

Tormund laughed, and slapped his huge thigh. “You’ve got a pretty way of talking, you know that? Well. That does change things. Where does he want to meet?”

"So you will?"

"I will. Tell the truth, I was going to anyway. Like you said, the Thenns are doing what he tells them to do, and the Ice-River clan, and the Hornfoots, ansthe cave people. Who'd have thought you can get the cave-people to do anything?" He shook his head. "I was going to have to make peace with him - at least this way I save a little face, right?" He clapped his hands. "Now go eat and drink. I'm getting sick of asking you to do that."

 

**LANCEL**

 

Tion Frey was attending Ser Foote, and despite his new station Lancel didn’t even try and interrupt it.

“Little Tion, little Tion,” the knight said, shaking his head as though exasperated, though the sparkle in his eye indicated he wasn't as much as he looked. “Again.”

Tion was stripped to the waist and both men were covered in sweat. They both had arming swords in their hands, and the two men were wearing steel gauntlets as a concession to the sheer danger of sparring with sharps.The moment his instructor was done talking, Tion Frey cut hard at his head.

Ser Foote withdrew his front foot to his back foot so that he stood in a narrow stance and out of his student's reach, his forward leg beneath him, standing straighter as he covered his head with his sword. Then he uncoiled like a viper striking and Tion Frey got his sword up. But his slip wasn’t deep enough - he didn’t pull back his front foot enough. Still, he covered his head well, and he countered - the exact same cut the master-at-arms had just used, textbook perfect.

Ser Foote twisted and flicked the younger man's blade up and to his own right but his counter-cut found Tion out of distance and stepping to the right, trying to baffle his adversary’s patient attempts to change the tempo.

His sword flicked out.

Ser Foote pulled back his front foot and covered his head. And cut-

Tion raised his sword without retreating.

Ser Foote's sword moved too fast for him to correct himself. It came to rest against Tion's out-thrust thigh.

The Master-At-Arms frowned. “You’re tired. We’ll call it for today, Tion. But you have to learn to move your legs.”

Tion looked frustrated and angry. Lancel couldn't tell why. Ser Foote could be savage, especially early in the morning after he’d been drinking, as he saw it the young man was getting off lightly.

Tion sheathed his arming sword after looking at the blade for nicks.

Ser Foote was examining his own blade, the new red-gripped arming sword that matched his long sword for war-gilt-steel guard and round pommel, and two newfangled finger rings on the guard. He had not sheathed his sword. “Ser Lancel Lannister - do I understand that you are at leisure?”

“Er… yes?”

He nodded. “I don’t think I’ve paid enough attention to your training, lately. Have you been practicing?”

“Yes, my lord. Sword and poleaxe.”

He nodded. “Well, it's a start. You won't embarrass me. But I know you took a wound in on the hill a week ago, and I have a mind to be a little more attentive to your life of arms. Draw.”

He had his arming sword on his hip and took the sword carefully from its scabbard. He couldn't help but be a little afraid of the man at the best of times. He was older, bigger, and he had a temper, to say nothing of how his eyes went reptilian when anybody made him angry or frustrated him.

“I’m going to make some simple attacks,” he said. “Try not to die.” He smiled. “You were just knighted, you have so much to live for.”

Then he struck.

Lancel had been in guard. In one of his conversations with his idol, his famous cousin who was in his own opinion the greatest knight living in the world today, Ser Jaime had carelessly told him to always do what you know, and he knew that he liked having his sword out in front of him - between him and whatever was coming at him. He was young, and Ser Foote was bigger, stronger and longer limbed than he was, so he felt it was fortunate how the basic centre-line guards were for him.

He flicked her blade into to cross Ser Foote's blade, vis-a-vis. The older man's wrist was like iron, but Lancel had swaggered blades with plenty of bigger, stronger men.

Ser Foote bounced back and cut again. But Lancel had been paying attention to what he'd done to Tion, and made sure to slip back his front foot and sure enough, Ser Foote cut at his leg.

He nodded, obviously pleased, then cut at his head. Lancel covered and covered, but the second was sloppy and late.

Ser Foote did it again, faster, but Lancel was getting comfortable and was ready, he and made both covers, even flourishing the blade cheekily at the second.

He thrust.

Ser Foote left the needle sharp point of his arming sword at the laces of beneath his throat. “Up until that point, you were positively excellent, except your sloppy draw.”

"I'll work on it."

"Do that. You could be as great a swordsman as your cousin, but mess up your draw and you will be dead before you get the chance to prove it." He sighed. "Still, you'll do. Get your kit and meet me tonight. It seems we have a target of opportunity."

"The enemy?"

Ser Foote grinned, and bared his teeth. "In a manner of speaking. They're merchants, and we want what they have."

Lancel actually flinched. Until that moment, naive as it was, he had imagined there were two kingdoms, Westeros and Pentos (or just Essos). He had thought that in Essos, bad men ruled, who abused hordes of ignorant peasants, while in Westeros, a good king and his fine councilers ruled benignly over good men and true. He had thought that his king went to make war in Essos by right, and to protect Westeros from the deprivations of their neighbor. And did so openly and honestly, making war justly.

He had been very young. And it had been easier, to believe that.

Following Ser Foote had been an education, and now, by commanding him to banditry, he was undermining these assumptions as surely as a good engineer undermines the walls of a town. "Don't flinch like that. It's no different to burning farms and villages. Or do you think someone is rebuilding them?"

Lancel turned to the Master-At-Arms, full of indignation as only a young man can be - and couldn’t hope to contain himself. "Is this another thing you want me to keep from Tygett?"

He actually laughed. "You know I love the old man, but this is all over his head."

Lancel's eyes widened. "Lord Tywin?" He breathed, but Ser Foote was shaking his head. "You are destroying these lands," he asked, knowing this time he was right "for the King?" It seemed too terrible to think about.

He laughed. "Destroy? Essos is ten times the size of Westeros. Bigger, maybe. We have as much as we can hold, the rest is no good to us." He shrugged. "But Essos will never threaten our home again, that I can guarantee you." As though seized with a sudden violent passion, he grabbed Lancel's shoulder suddenly. He was very strong, though of course Lancel had already known that. "Come!" he said, and he started to climb the tower’s stairs, which coiled like a worm up the six story structure. Up and up they climbed, the stairs turning so tightly that a misstep could send an unwary man crashing to the bottom, Ser Foote never releasing his grip.

Lancels calves were burning by the time they emerged on the castle’s roof. There were four men on duty - watching for the first sign of trouble. They looked fresh and alert, Ser Tygett was very a careful captain. Ser Foote led him to the edge of the roof and pointed east, towards Pentos.

As far as the eye could see, there was fire.

All the way up the valley, towns and hamlets burned.

"Do you not think the silken girdle that binds all of the world is parted this evening?" asked Ser Foote, and then he laughed. "And you wondered why Stannis hasn't joined us yet. He's preoccupied, as you can see. As you would be as well, if not for Pentos' toy soldiers. Listen, lad. Essos needs stability to function. Any disruption, and it all falls apart, all the delicate web of alliances and trade and favours is tossed aside and they are all at one another's throats. Every man of blood in Westeros worth the name will be here before the end of autumn. They can't shift us, and we're not going to move. Sooner or later, they'll run out of gold to pay them. And then? We’ll take ten thousand ransoms, we’ll burn their fields, we’ll throw down their holy places - whatever they worship, I've lived here a decade and I'm still not sure, we’ll unbind peasant from lord, liberate their slaves and strip them of their wealth. There’s no one to stop us, not in this soft country. By the time winter comes, by the time good King Rhaegar returns from his tournaments and festivals, there will be nothing left."

It was... horrifying, and yet so bold. So much fire. Like the twinkling of all the stars in the heavens.

"But surely the King is against this…"

"Oh, lad." Ser Foote smiled. "Lancel Lannister, knighted at my hand, the King's Hand ordered this. Tygett got his letter demanding it, why do you think he rode to war with Stannis? Solidarity? Please. We spend more time fighting the Stormlanders than we do the Pentoshii. Mind you, he only did it because he wanted to - the king's writ isn't all that it was, and there's an ocean between him and us."

At last Lancel understood, or thought he did. "And once we win…"

Ser Foote shook his head. "I drunk too much at my evening meal, or I wouldn’t say so much," he said. He looked at Lancel from under his brows. "But I want you to understand, lad. There is no win. No end to this, not in out lifetimes. What we are here to do is work faster. And to turn over the towns we take to Westerlanders, and not those of Stannis Baratheon as Tygett agreed, we can't hold this territory, and there's no sense trying, but before we leave we can squeeze it dry, and better it goes into our pockets than to Stannis." He shrugged, and sat with his back against the wall. "That's why I invited you. That, and it seemed a pity that you waste your youth when there’s a fortune to be made here."

 

**JON**

 

When they at last breasted a hill and their destination came into sight Jon was surprised despite himself. It seemed astounding that they had not noticed so massive a structure before now. Even though consideration of the facts told him that the trees and the roll of the hills had concealed it until that moment, there was something almost unnatural about its sudden appearance ahead. Jon had been expecting something small, like one of the fortified manors of most of the lesser nobility of his father's lands dwelled in. What he saw now was built on an entirely different scale. The Gates of the Moon had started life as low irregular building, containing several court-yards or enclosures extending over a considerable space of ground. Later architects had added the tall, turretted, and castellated walls and towers, creating a whole that was mean and ugly. It was heavily-built, with massive stone buttresses supporting a collection of towers, pinnacles and sheer-roofed halls. The battlements were cut from stone a yard thick, the dry moat was wide and studded with spikes of twisted metal. The massive gates were barred by a mighty iron-bound drawbridge. Murder holes perforated the stone above it, and arrow slits marked every wall. Built right up to the banks of the river Quan, it was damp and cold in the mornings, the huge structure rambling around a courtyard almost too large for the scale of man. Unlike the Eyrie, it was all too clearly a fortress built for war rather than any human comfort.

Jon dragged on his reins and brought his horse to a halt. Ivor, the boy who as far as everyone was concerned was now his responsibility, blinked owlishly up at it, as the rest of the party curbed their horses.

He pulled the collar of his heavy sable-lined cloak up around his ears and then reached out to pat the neck of his horse, who was becoming restless, pawing at the ground with an iron-shod forefoot.

Then they waited.

He glanced around at the knightly escort who waited with him, whose horses were likewise restive, metal bits and curb chains clinking and jangling as heads were tossed and their breath rose like steam from a cauldron into the cold air. The knights had a grim look about them, their weather-beaten faces hard beneath thick hats, open helms and hoods of chain-mail.

Horses whinnied. A few of them adjusted themselves. Somehow, nobody spoke. 

Frowning, he tried to sit taller in his saddle. Robert beside Elbert, fidgeting with a golden coin - a medallion of unusually large size and uncomfortable edges that held his cloak and was currently rubbing against his neck.

At last there was a clattering of hooves as a groom led out a big horse, seventeen hands high at the shoulder and black as an assassins heart richly bridled with polished leather and glittering silver. A big man, nearly as big as his father, strode out behind. He was a tall, strong man, grey before his time with chiseled sun-burnt features, a hint of mischief about the weathered mouth, and an air of surety and danger about him that came from being a veteran. Jon had last seen him a year ago, but since then he'd shaved off his beard, most likely recently judging by the way that the razor seemed to have abraded his skin so that it looked raw-scraped. He was dressed in a simple padded doublet of black cloth, opened to reveal an unbuttoned shirt and hairy chest. Ser Denys Arryn, keeper of the Bloody Gate in perpetuity and until recently King Rhaegar Targaryen's Master of Laws raised a hand in greeting. "So how was your voyage?" He called over to them.

"Awful." his mother replied in total honesty and candor before anyone else had a chance to. "There was a storm such to make me bring up my guts, and likely my soul as well. I thought my last hour had come, and went so far as to attempt to confess my sins to the Seven." Elbert laughed, and Robert did as well. Lyanna had no time at all for the Seven. "Fortunately I have enough of them that we'd arrived before I'd had time to recite even half. I've still got plenty if there ever is a next trip." Her tone was playful, but still suggested that if there ever was, it would be over her dead body.

The Keeper of the Bloody Gate shook his head sympathetically. Jon was reasonably sure this wasn't the official line of questions that he was supposed to be asking. "Well, you'll have to tell me about it. Come on in!"

Some signal was given, and the drawbridge began to lower. It was massive. As it slowly descended, thick chains the width of a man's waist became visible. The scrape of metal against metal filled the air, and the noise of intricate machinery clanged from the vault beneath. The wooden drawbridge fell on to its stone heel with a resounding boom. They rode in, passing under the shadow of the mighty ramparts and into the yawning maw of the castle gate, the ponderous weight of armoured knight and barded warhorse causing the timbers of the drawbridge to shudder and creak. Behind him, the portcullis began to creep downwards again. With a shriek of metal, the drawbridge started to rise. The chains, mighty as they were, shuddered and creaked as the vast construction of oak and iron was hauled high. Eventually, the machinery ceased its clashing, and the breach was sealed. The castle sat inviolate once more.

They swept into the wide square where their horses fanned out, pranced, and then stood with breath smoking from their nostrils, and hooves pawing the mud. Men and women were pulling off their hats and standing to attention at the sight of them. Jon dismounted and stretched, before he helped the boy off the horse, needing to all but lift him to do it. A groom led away his charger, and another servant stepped up to with a pitcher of water, which he helped himself to. His curly dark hair was damp with sweat, and he quickly ran a gloved hand over it, trying to get it to behave, not that it ever did.

He waved over another servant, and gave him charge of Ivor, who was still telling him to take the little boy down to the kitchens and feed him until he passed out. The child was nothing bust skin and bones.

"So how long will you stay?" Denys was asking his father as they made their way across the yard to the Hall.

Robert hesitated a moment. "Not long." He said, less than decisively. He sounded almost embarrassed. "A few days, then we're going through the Bloody Gate and riding the rest of the way. We can make it - with good horses." He paused. "I'd like to see Jon. I hoped he'd be here tonight."

"He was going to take you hawking tomorrow." Robert looked strangely disappointed and relieved, all at once.

Two large torches fixed to either side of the doors flickered in the wind. The knockers were made of brass; had they been polished, no doubt they would have gleamed magnificently, but now they were only a dull, brownish gold. Shaped like ravens' heads, the knockers possessed eyes formed of glittering jewels. As they approached the front doors were flung open; in the aperture stood a tall white-haired man in black with a ring of keys at his waist.

Cold, unadorned stone walls rose high, tapering towards the roof thirty feet up, keeping the air in the cavernous hall cool, and it was darker in the room then it was outside. The chamber was furnished sparsely. A fireplace of huge dimensions sat in the centre of the wall on the left-hand side, but only embers lay in the grate. Several pieces of fine furniture decorated the hall and these, including leather, high-backed wooden chairs and a small table, were arranged before an enormous fireplace placed along the centre wall. A huge rectangular table, intended for serving meals to a large company, stood at the other end of the hall, with benches at the low end and chairs at the other. Three tattered standards hung on the walls, the flags nearly worn away with age, hanging limply in the chill air.

This was the public hall. The family's private rooms would be elsewhere.

Jon glanced pensively at his brother. It had been far too long since they'd seen one another, and he would have liked to talk about it, but he did not know how. Jon had never been one to share his innermost thoughts and he was unaccustomed himself to expressing emotion in words. He'd never before felt the need to confide in others, to confess his fears for the future or the hopes of the present. They were part of him, but deeply seated. Did Steffon even know how dear he was to him? Too often friendships were taken for granted, and loved ones… loved ones even more so, as if there'd always be unlimited tomorrows.

"Is it always so gloomy?"

"Pretty much, yeah. But it keeps us out-doors." Steffon replied with a shrug.

As Jon looked idly about, taking note of this or that, a child of about seven years of age came to have a look at him. It was a girl, with fair hair and large eyes. Her dress was well-made of fine fabric, but not frilly or ostentatious. By her somewhat rumpled, disordered appearance, she'd thrown off her everyday clothes to change hurriedly into more formal clothing on hearing of a guest in the house. She'd apparently done Jon the honour of washing her face, though she'd missed a spot around her right ear.

"Are you going to miss it?"

"I am. But that's life - good things you hold onto as long as you can. I'm not afraid to go to battle."

"I didn't think you would be." Jon replied with a smile.

"There's something different about you, Jon."

"And I have changed? In truth, I am older."

Steffon studied him a moment. "You're what you were, but you're something else as well. Something dark. I fear you have known trouble."

Jon inclined his head. "I suppose I have. And you?"

"Oh yes." Steffon replied, then winked, and suddenly the distance between them was gone. Maybe Jon had imagined it, maybe he was sensitive to something else, he couldn't say. "Come on. There's a lot you have to see, and a lot of people you have to meet." And so he let himself be led off, glad to once again be with his brother.

 

**STEFFON**

 

Steffon covered his goblet with his hand and kept it there until the servant had gone away. He would have enjoyed a little more wine, and after a long day in bright sun after a fortnight of clouds and dark days he certainly deserved another cup or few, but Steffon's sense for conflict, as experienced as the nose of a hunting hound, suggested restraint. Something told him that he did not want a haze of wine slowing his thoughts tonight.

The scene itself could scarcely have been more familiar to him, of course. The wooden palace called the Gates of the Moon had been Steffon's second home for many years now - as well as the Aerie further up. The atmosphere in the Great Hall, where ancient wooden carvings of animals and axes and other symbols hung from the rafters, was unquestionably festive, the bright colours of the nobles in their best clothes mingling with the sounds of tipsy laughter and the succulent smell of roast pork. But something was off-kilter here. There was a tension between his father and mother, not the usual sort, of two tempers flaring in them, but something more restrained. It might have been any number of things, of course, the Baratheons never lacked for conflict, but Steffon could not help feeling that something deeper and more troubling was going on.

At the table Elbert sat in his uncle's chair and Robert occupied the place opposite. Elbert's man, Weare, served them trout from the lake and duck from the marsh, with salad from the kitchen garden. A few seats away, his mother was being entertained - 'distracted' she would doubtless have termed it - by Lady Arryn, Elbert's second wife, an attractive widow whose children had all grown up and started their lives. Many thought her too old, nearly thirty years, though her children by her husband showed that at least she was fertile. Nyssa was tall, more handsome than beautiful — tall and strong with jet-black hair that had a shockingly white stripe in it from an old injury. The white patch and the scar by her mouth combined to give her a piratical look.

Sadly, as Steffon watched, his mother seemed to have lost patience entirely with Nyssa's conversation and was trying desperately to draw Elbert's eye. Her husband saw, but Robert was having far too much fun to help her out, and Elbert was leaning close to him, talking with quiet animation. But this gathering was no exercise in nostalgia, it was deadly serious business, his father had brought an army, and for all that his father could be a changeable and headstrong man, he was deadly serious where these matters were concerned.

"We have a month to get to Winterfell. Then off north to borrow trouble. You?"

Elbert leaned back in his chair, and shook his head. "I wish I was joining you. It's South for me. I can spare you Benjen. Truth is, don't think he'd let me order him to stay. He'll be back tomorrow as well."

"Trouble?"

"There's always trouble." Elbert sighed, then shrugged. "Maybe four ships. I'll need the rest."

Robert didn't say a word.

"It's been in the making ever since the King separated from his wife. Longer, perhaps. So why is the King the last to hear about it?" He mused. "For months now, I have talked and listened from morning till night. I have inspected the shipyards, the armouries, the barracks. From my cousins extensive network of informants in King's Landing I have heard secrets and revelations, so that my mind throbs. You know, Doran is building war galleys at inland shipyards? He hopes to assemble a hundred galleys, because if he can safeguard his coasts he has nothing to fear."

"The conflict is apparently controlled by spies."

Elbert agreed that this might seem to be the case. "On balance, the advantage in the persecution of hostilities can only be with Rhaegar. He's too wise to rely on Tywin Lannister riding to his assistance, but what else can he hold out for? So Doran stands first on one foot, then the other, because he knows the ships are coming, they are ready to sail, and his spies could never warn him in time."

"So you intend to prosecute the war?"

"The affair is complicated," said Elbert, in a manner that, in another man, you could only call evasive. "I don't know that I've got any choice."

Robert helped himself to the wine. “Well, for me, I have my obligations to Ned, and to my brother. A red sword and a bright sunset, that’s me,” he quipped, quoting a popular epic poem. Then he shrugged as well. "As for the rest, there was a time that Dorne could take on the best of the other kingdoms and still be standing when the smoke cleared, but it was back when out grandfathers were as young as our children are now. The world turns forward, not back, it isn't the same place as it was then, and if Oberyn doesn't know it, well his brother is shrewd enough to figure it out. Oh, the King isn't one for fighting - it'd be a fine mess if he tried, but he has people to do that for him, and those people know their work. I should know, a lot of them are my men. Leave them to do it, and keep out of it yourself."

"You know that's not possible."

"Isn't it?" He took a swallow of the wine and grimaced. "I wish you could tell your people that the wine they make would be greatly improved if they didn't eat their grapes first." Then he took another swallow anyway. "Anyway, why not? Because you said a few words? Well then, keep your promise. Send a few ships down south, blockade Sunspear, and tell them if they try to leave you'll sink them. Then you can sit the whole stupid war out. What would you be fighting for anyway? The King? Who cares? It's got nothing to do with you, or your people."

Elbert didn't respond for a long moment. "There are times I almost envy you, you know that? Yet Rhaegar is my king. There have been more temperate ones, perhaps. More discerning ones, quite possibly. Yet king he is, and so whatever flaws the possesses is outweighed by his sense of purpose and vision for his land, and I, at least, must respect that."

Robert sighed. "Damn it, Elbert, you have more sense than this. We both know it. You'd be doing Doran and Rhaegar alike a favour if you sat tight here and let them sort it out between them."

"There will be war anyway. They've both gone too far to back down."

"So what if they don't? This isn't being fought for real, sensible and understandable reasons - though I imagine there are enough of them once they care to look. But there's only one reason to go to war. And that's if you believe in what you're doing, and know you can win."

"At least it'll only be a short war. Over before winter."

Steffon's father stared morosely into his glass, thick and red and dark as bull's blood, before brining it to his lips and draining it in two heavy swallows. When he looked up, his face was flushed, and his eyes glistened with the first signs of a black mood, the sort that Jon knew well, beginning to overtake him. "Well," he said at last, "I don't doubt that will be true enough for some."

 

**THE KING'S MEN**

 

Torches spat and gave off resinous smells. It was an hour after sunset.

“Well?” asked the queen dowager.

In every period and in every country, in every city and in all the corridors of power there have ever been always are many voices, but only ever two parties: the reactionary and the progressive. These two tendencies came face to face in King Rhaegar's Hand and his brother.

Jon Connington considered himself the natural head of the great lords, the incarnation of the permanence of the past, and his power and conviction came from certain principles that he was prepared to defend to the last: the right to private war between gentles, the right of the great feudal overlords to coin money within their own territories, the morality of chivalry and the rule of law, submission to the Faith as the supreme arbitrating power, and maintenance of the great estate of the seven kingdoms in their integrity by dint of the power of the King. All those things that had been established owing to the circumstances of the fabric of society in previous centuries, and which Aerys Targaryen and his grandfather Aegon the Unlikely had abolished or sought to overthrow, but now, in the hands of Rhaegar, had seen a revival.

Viserys Targaryen stood for progress. His main ideas concerned the centralisation of power, the unification of finance and administration, the division of Faith and state giving independence to civil power from religious authority, external peace by withdrawing troops from beyond their borders, fortifying strategic towns and garrisoning them permanently, internal peace by forcing submission to royal authority, the augmentation of production and commerce, and the security of communications. All things that Jon Connington, too, approved in principle and opposed in execution.

Vehemently opposed by the feudal party - Connington and his allies of convenience, Viserys Targaryen had succeeded in rallying to the king a new and growing class which was gradually becoming aware of it's own importance: the middle class. On many occasions, whether the affair concerned war or raising taxes, he had called upon the Middle class of King's Landing to gather before the Red Keep. He had done the same thing in various provincial towns. As yet, these small assemblies had no right to discuss, there were merely to listen to the measures that King Rhaegar proposed, and then to approve them.

"For the duration of the conflict with Dorne, it is the wish of the king that I assume command of his armies." Lord Connington was saying with satisfaction, having at last achieved what he'd worked his entire life towards. It wasn't much of a council. Not really. The absences spoke louder than anything. Lord Willis Tyrell, his brothers and lackeys occupied the western corner, entirely unreadable, the Hightowers. Tyrion Lannister represented his father, since Jaime was still Mooton's prisoner, recovering from his injuries. None of his lords or knights looked like they intended to look to him for direction or leadership, then again the little man didn't look fit for it. In fact, Edmure Tully was the only Lord Paramount actually present.

"And which armies would those be?" Came a voice, and Jon Connington found himself turning as a tall man stepped out from amongst the gathered lords from the Reach, another of his persistent enemies, if for different reasons than Viserys. Renly Baratheon was a dangerous enemy to have. Not for the normal reasons - he was clumsy in his intrigues; he was a populist with an uncanny knack for alienating people, he had no friends - only lackeys and enemies, and he seemed queerly blind to the consequences of his actions, but he was dangerous nonetheless, because no tactic carried much weight. Money gave no ascendancy - he promptly forgot who had bought him; noble blood failed to impress him, for his was the best; he was not subject to force, for he was as strong as any man and in the prime of his youth; no party had a hold over him for the only parties he would join were the ones he created himself and abandoned when they served their purpose; and even the spectacle of madness left him indifferent. Renly excelled in all those supple arts of the courtier which Robert neglected and the other brother Stannis despised. Robert owed his popularity to his own large, open, daring, and lavish nature. Renly was subtler and sought to win, by care and pains, what Robert obtained without effort.

"Each of you will be supply the men." Connington replied sharply. "Time, is the one thing we cannot afford to waste, with every moment we delay they fortify their keeps, they gather their men, they fortify the boneway. No, we must take the offensive, and we must do so sensibly and without hesitation." Connington replied, folding his arms. "Understand this, if nothing else, this is a courtesy, not a negotiation - you are all amongst the greatest of the King's subjects, but you are subjects, and you have no honourable recourse but to to accept the Royal Edicts."

"A fine support indeed. It is clear you learned nothing from the bread riots not a year ago, when the King, and you yourself, had to take refuge in the Sept of Baelor from the uproar." Viserys retorted.

"I have not shirked my loyalty to the throne, and neither will any of you." Jon Connington continued, as if Viserys hadn't spoken.

"The Seven Kingdoms will not kneel before you, just because you demand it." Willas Tyrell asked.

"You speak for The King. But you are not him. If matters are what you would have us believe, perhaps you should produce him. Simply for continuity of authority." Renly added, folding his arms.

Blundering though he in some ways was, Jon Connington was far from being a fool. He understood that there were moments in life that were just as definite as battle. As stark. Moments when a man could see things as if they were outlined in scarlet, when the truth is illuminated, when a man’s character changes because he understands something heretofore hidden, for good or ill. In a flash he saw that anger would serve no purpose whatever in this debate. And that, further, his anger was a bent, nicked sword in any debate. He couldn't have said by what train he arrived at this conclusion, but he saw it clearly. This was one conversation in which he could not allow himself to be provoked.

His eyes met the clever blue ones of his wife for a moment - having invited her to watch the deliberations, and she was glowing with reflected glory. It helped him centre himself.

"The King intends to put action rather than words to the matter. He is riding for Shipbreaker Bay, where he will take ships and move to blockade Sunspear himself."

Lord Jon Connington looked down so as not to show what he was thinking, but the others had a pretty good idea of the gist. There'd be a pretty mess to clean up if brave King Rhaegar landed in Dorne to finally get around to conquering the place that had traditionally defeated all efforts to occupy it. He had already shown his capacity in Essos, where he had arrived to support the Archon of Tyrosh against the ambitions of Volantis, back when his father was still alive.

Rhaegar had arrived proudly with his banners, and had then allowed himself to be so imposed on and outmanoeuvred by the Volantese that he had, in fact, yielded everything while believing himself victorious, and had come home without even having engaged in a skirmish.

One needed to beware above all of any enterprise in which he was engaged. None of which prevented Rhaegar Targaryen being Jon Connington's best and closest friend, and quite a bit more. But, indeed, you can think what you like of your friends, provided you don't tell them. Jon Connington knew that Rhaegar needed him, that he couldn't survive without him. He had to be strong for both of them.

"And what of the Prince of Dorne?" Renly asked, his lips quirking smugly. "The man who you condemn as to have provoked this. Surely you can produce him, at least? Or has something unfortunate happened to him?"

"No." Lady Lynesse Connington leaned forward. "He isn't dead. You needn't waste your tears on Oberyn. I daresay he thrives; men of his ilk generally do. A traitor Oberyn may be, but he's a ruthless one, quite willing to let the consequences fall upon others, at least so far. Better you should look to your own than concern yourself with the likes of him, Lord Renly."

"Your husband has made his accusations." Renly replied, his tone dismissive. "I'd be very happy to hear what the Prince of Dorne has to say in response. He has that right."

Connington bared his teeth. "The right? What right would that be?"

“Only the laws of our land,” - replied Renly, making no effort to disguise his delight in the Hand's reaction.

“The laws of Westeros,” interrupted Connington, “permit and enjoin each to execute justice within his own jurisdiction. The most petty lord, though his writ may encompass no greater an estate then his own head, may arrest, try, and condemn a traitor found within his own domain. And shall that power be denied to the King? For the sake of Oberyn, unchivalrous, as false as a caitiff, for whom every word you say on his behalf is slander to your noble character?" Connington growled.

"If you want to insult me, it's not enough to simply want it. Technique is also required." Renly replied, supremely disdainful. "And Oberyn's blood and position grant him right to a full Court Trial."

Connington looked a moment away from striking the bigger man. His hand clenched into a fist, and his face reddened. Then he took a deep breath. "Very well. A trial then, with the accused in absentia, having fled. Oberyn Martell attempted to murder The King by poisoning two days ago. His plot was discovered, and he has since fled, after an unsuccessful attempt to achieve with force what he failed with treachery."

"I disagree." Renly replied, meeting the other Stormlander's eyes. "Representing my brother, as Lord of the Stormlands, I hold that Oberyn has the privilege to answer your accusations himself. Furthermore, I find your evidence inconclusive." He stepped forward. He had six inches on Connington, and was just as broad across the shoulders. Connington didn't flinch, he's broken bigger men. "What do you think," for a moment he glanced at Willas, then settled on Tyrion. "Lord Lannister?"

Tyrion didn't say a word. He didn't need to. And in an instant the balance turned, and Lord Jon Connington of Griffin's Roost, the most powerful man after the King, and even, from many points of view, more important than the Sovereign, whose opinion always prevailed, who decided everything to do with the administration and dictated his orders to Lord Paramounts, The Smallcouncil and the realm as a whole, and foreign powers was suddenly alone in supporting his proposal.

Such is the nature of influence at courts; it depends on a strange and fluctuating concatenation of states of mind, in which situations become insensibly transformed with the march of events and the sum of the interests at stake. And fortune carries within it the germs of misfortune. Not that Connington was threatened with misfortune, he only lowered his head, as though conceding a touch. "Very well." He replied coldly. The council's refusal to indict Oberyn Martell only underscored what he already knew - that he was presiding over a coalition government of rival factions and uncertain loyalties. By letting himself be manoeuvred into seeking a charge of treason and then failing to get it, he'd not only exposed his own vulnerability and brought to light the council's inner dissensions, and antagonised Rhaegar's younger brother to no useful purpose. All in all, he thought sourly, a day's work to be proud of, and one sure to come back to haunt him in the troubled times ahead. His earlier good mood entirely gone, he cracked his neck loudly.

Renly blinked, as though barely able to believe that Connington had conceded. "I am going to run him down like a fox and drag him back here, since you request it. He can await trial with his sister. I am not unreasonable. That is the only concession I am prepared to offer, however. Now return to your keeps, and gather your men. Because like it or not, it's war."

 

**MARGAERY**

 

The Court had been enjoying the travel, and attendant hunting, traveling and flirtation. More and more the king was receding from sight, and more and more the court's attention fixed on Aegon. The prince began and ended his day in prayer as he always had, but rode out like a carefree boy for the rest of the day. A few attend him as companions - they hunt, dance, play at summer sports and join with the court. Every time the prince coughs at dinner, or mounts a horse that looks too strong for him, his grandmothers head comes up, like a hound hearing a horn.

But it was Jon Connington, and the most Holy Septon Maynard whose conflict over the boy that was most visible, and the prince is advised by his father's Hand in the morning, by the septon in the afternoon and by evening has no idea what he thinks about anything.

Still, they have been good weeks, spent amongst the King's Household, and she knows she will miss them, when the Royal Progress begins and she is sent back to Highgarden. The noise of the castle packing up and readying for a great journey was a counterpart to the harp, and the melancholy music that Rhaegar favored.

Margaery was used to the king - she'd been one of Elia's ladies when the queen was in favor, and had noticed that he seemed more comfortable with them than in the company of his friends and councilors, always gambling or dancing or flirting, considering such courtesy an obligation of chivalry. She'd never thought amiss of it. Still, when the hand he always rested on her shoulder slipped, she was taken off-guard.

"Your grace?"

"Sorry. Just in a mournful mood. I had thought to tour my kingdoms, as I have every year. Instead, I'm riding to war on the morrow."

He was exaggerating, or at least Margaery imagined he was. Even Connington, efficient as he could be, surely couldn't have mobilized an army so quickly.

"Truly, I think this is what I'll miss most of all. I'll think of you, and the peace of these stolen moments, while I'm at war. I think it's the only peace I've known since…"

He leaned down and ran his lips across the exposed nape of her neck and she stiffened. Then his other hand closed around her upper arm, and she did her best to scramble away, still helplessly clutching the harp as though it were a shield. And he stepped after her, still smiling warmly, and there was something she'd only dimly guessed at before smoldering in his violet eyes.

She opened her mouth to say something, what exactly she was not sure. But she didn't get a chance.

The King was of a deceptively slight build, for he was strong and very quick and popularly reckoned to be among the finest knights alive, though it had been years since he'd done anything to display it, and he had both of her hands in an eyeblink, and then he pushed her against the side table, took a handful of her hair and forced his mouth against hers. She stumbled, as she tried to struggle free, then bit his lip as hard as she could in desperation, and he snarled something and threw her roughly to floor.

She screamed. She could feel the blood rushing in her ears and her heart beating heavily as he pressed his weight against her.

Ser Barristan Selmy came into the private solar without undue haste a few of her terrified heartbeats later. Margaery Tyrell was under the King, and he had her skirts above her knees and she was weeping. Selmy left the door open.

"Your Grace," the Lord Commander said, sounding almost gentle. "Let Lady Tyrell up, please."

Margaery knew that she seemed a sweet, gentle girl, but she had enough spirit to slap the King as soon as he released her hands. Rhaegar's eyes widened alarmingly, and he slammed the heel of his hand into her chin, knocking her back off her feet.

Barristan had to drag him off her. Barristan Selmy was taller, much heavier, and though he was getting old he trained constantly, but it was still difficult going. It took lifting the King clear of the ground to separate them, but the old knight managed it, setting him on his stool without doing him any harm or causing him any discomfort.

The King sucked in a deep breath, as if he had just awakened. "She made me!" he said, like a boy at his mother. "She came after me like a bitch in heat!"

Barristan Selmy ignored his liege, gently helping her find her feet, and carefully wiping away her tears with the hem of his cloak. "Hush now, it's alright." He told her, clearly aware of how ridiculous he sounded but not knowing what else to say. "Best go back to your rooms, clean yourself up and get dressed. You're going to be okay now." He said, empty words of comfort that never sounded more pitiful.

She clutched her ruined dress to herself and sobbed getting unsteadily to her feet. He removed his cloak, and draped it around her to cover her modesty.

"She seduced me," said the King, his eyes steady as The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard escorted Margaery to the door. "That shameless whore." He added when neither of them responded.

Ser Barristan stopped at the door, and then turned his back on her. "Of course, sire" He replied quietly. In those three words, he somehow expressed disbelief, absolute contempt, and a weary resignation to a situation he found intolerable, all without any disrespect whatsoever. "Your Grace, are you quite recovered?" His words were clipped and careful.

That seemed to be just what the King needed to hear.

"A moment, I must compose myself." The king said, standing up. He adjusted his doublet and belt, then straightened his hair. Ser Barristan firmly closed the door behind her. "And don't mention her." She overheard the king say. "In fact, Ser Barristan, see to it that I never hear her name mentioned ever again."


	13. Steffon Baratheon, Doran Martell, Robb Stark, Catelyn Stark, Ygritte

**GOLDEN COMPANY**

 

"Well, this is Pentos." 'Homeless' Harry Strickland told his two guards, indicating the city stretching out in front of them, as though there was anything else to look at as the boat wallowed in towards the wharves. From this angle, Pentos huddled under grey skies. The city didn't look like a major trading centre, a cosmopolitan link through which all the world seemed to pass, a mosaic-tiled hive of commercial and religious honey. It looked, not to put too fine a point on it, like a shit-hole, and the open sewers which fed into the harbour oozing beneath it, and the waste that finally dripped into the thick waters as warm as blood only made the comparison more evident. "Trust me, it's even uglier than it looks."

The Andal standing next to the Golden Company's Paymaster, who's name was Tancred (not that he'd ever been asked), sighed as he looked around, and cracked his knuckles. Breakrock, his home village, lay in a valley far in distance and even further in ideas from Pentos. He clung to the old ways of Andalos as best he could, not least because he hardly knew any others. Still, he was from a warrior race, as all the Andals were - even if it had been longer then anyone could recall since there had a war to fight, or that the Andals had been counted as a nation. He respected his allies, these strange men from beyond the sea who fought better than anyone he'd ever seen, even if they had drawn him into a war he had no understanding of. He was not, in his own estimation or that of those who took the time to meet him, a stupid man, however nobody had taken the time to explain it to him, and so he had only his own conclusions to draw on.

Tancred was a big, broad-shouldered man with a mane of tawny yellow hair and a thick, bushy beard a shade darker. Though he was not much more than twenty years old he was obviously physically powerful, with ropes of muscle wrapping his arms, and like a lot of his countrymen, he looked leonine.

So did Geoff, his friend and the other of Harry Strickland's guards, but Geoff made a distinctly scrawny lion even when he wasn' t wearing the lenses on a wire that were manufactured in Pentos, the tiny pieces of specially cut glass which he needed to see properly. Though he dwarfed the men around him, he was neither tall nor wide by Andal standards, and his beard had always been and probably would always be on the patchy side.

Both of them wore relatively little. Britches and their heavy swords, and rawhide sandals, their powerful physiques bared.

Harry Strickland sighed as well, but for a different reason. Harry Strickland stared at the city for a moment longer, then turned and spat into the deep blue water of the harbour. He watched the phlegm bob for a moment before the choppy water disintegrated it. Out of habit he glanced down at his hands. Crusted scabs and old bruises stared back, and he winced.

The waterfront crawled with people, and buildings lined the grey sweep of the bay, narrow windowed, all squashed together, roofs slumping, paint peeling, stained with salt, green with moss, black with mould, like the stumps of rotten teeth. There was no escaping the seedy look about the place, or the smell. Or to be more precise, the reek. Rotten salt fish, old corpses, coal smoke and overflowing latrine pits rolled up together.

Pentos was a very different city from Braavos, which he had just come from. Both cities were rich enough to make any in Westeros seem poor, but that was the extent of their commonality. Perhaps the principle difference was the people. Both cities were much the same, a melting pot of people from all over Essos and further still, but the essential characters of the cities came about a very different outcome.

In Braavos the small trades had a share of the prosperity of the city. The grocers and the shopkeepers were prosperous people; though far from being soft-handed bourgeois they were tough little bastards who cut an empire out of the guts of their neighbors, the guildsmen were rich, by any standard, and not just the Masters - a man good at his trade and not afraid to work would be prosperous; the men who owned inns were rich, and so were the men who owned boats. Even the men who worked hard got rich, if they were clever and lucky.

Whereas in Pentos, only the rich were rich. A handful of men owned everything, just thirty or forty families. The caste of workers derived no earthly benefit whatsoever from the riches of Pentos's vast overseas trading empire - the opposite if anything. The hills had once been home to tribes of the wild hill-folk - the Andals, but the city had forced those tribes north, or assimilated them, chewed them up and spat them out again.

Of course, the docks were the worst of it. The world over, docks were heartless places, ruled by the same vices all over the world, from Gulltown in The Vale to far off Asshai by the shadow - or so he imagined, he'd never wandered quite that far; but it was bad here - prostitution of girls and boys too young to even have much idea what their trade is about, thieves and thugs and drunkeness, but worst of all was the sheer greed, so that workers were underpaid and merchants got fat. Lust, gluttony, greed, pride - dockyards tended to be, in most cities, nastier places than battlefields, and his bloody trade had given him the perspective to know what he was talking about.

Braavos' docks which he had just left had indentured servants who were slaves in all but name and tired and overworked stevedores. But the stevedores were mostly citizens and the slaves - well, at least they ate.

But the docks he was looking at now were peopled by men and women at the end of despair. It was the edge of winter, and there were beggars in women’s cast-off shifts and no shoes, backs hunched to carry bundles of rags. They looked as bad as the poorest Westerland peasants too tired and broken down to work the mines left to starve on the streets, or refugees from the height of the war he'd fought for the man they had come so far to meet against Lys a year ago, when the armies burned a hundred hamlets a day and drove them to the fields and forests, where there wasn't much to do except eat each other or starve.

Harry Strickland had done a lot of things he wasn't proud of. This was just another in a long line of them.

"Right, then." He gave the nearest sailor a cheery nod, the gestured to his two big men, both of who reacted to being so obviously out of their element by glowering. "Off I go." He received no more then a grunt in return, but knights were supposed to be courteous, and it was no less a knight then Ser Toyne who had told him that it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back. So he grinned like they'd given a friendly send-off, strode down the clattering gangplank and into the place he hated beyond all others.

But the docks was just the entrance. It was all just as bad. Everywhere in Pentos, there were slaves. They didn't call them that, of course, not after what Braavos had done to their fleet, but only Volantis could claim to have more - whatever they were called. There were thousands. More. Slaves displaced the working poor - anyone of any power had slaves, not servants. Men had slave mistresses and when the slave woman bears children to the master, they were slaves as well. Last time he'd been here, negotiating on Ser Toyne's behalf, he'd heard his innkeeper telling his wife that every time he fucked their servants, he was making them money.

Strickland had no illusions about himself, a man in his position could not afford them, but there was only so much anyone could be expected to take - and still call himself a man. He'd killed that man and his wife on principle, using his dirk, left them in their blood then slept like a baby. Slavery rotted families, undermined morals, and turned ordinary people into petty tyrants. To say nothing of what it engendered in the slaves themselves. He had seen slavery in many places - he'd spent a decade in Slaver's bay, fighting for first one side, then the other and all the while trying to figure out the difference, where slavery was as taken for granted as walking upright and breathing - but only the most wretched had no possibility of freeing themselves by work and they were protected by laws even as property of another man. And there was none of that here.

He walked slowly staring up at looming buildings on one side, swaying masts on the other. The rain had started up stronger now. It trickled from mossy eaves and broken gutters, turned the cobbles dark, made the people hunch and curse. He came from the close buildings and onto a wide river bank, all built up and fenced in with stone. He paused a moment, wondering which way to go.

The city went on far as he could see, bridges upstream and down, buildings on the far bank even bigger than on this side-towers, domes, roofs, going on and on, half-shrouded and turned dreamy grey by the rain. Moving through a winding maze of side streets, lanes and alleys with the unerring instinct of a rat in a maze he came at last to a warehouse, he fitted a key into the lock of a heavy oak door.

Despite seeming an unimportant, forgotten structure, it had been carefully scouted by experts from both sides, and was being watched even now. Pentos was not a safe city, not even when it came to matters like this.

A dozen were waiting for them, big, killing men, bad as any in the Golden Company, each of them dusty as if from long riding. Before them stood a tall man who had probably once been quite athletic until the big dinners had finally weighed him down. The harsh lines of his dusky face were accentuated by fatigue, the ride had obviously been hard on him, but his aspect was that of a ruler of men, illustrated by the deference his men gave him, for all that his garb was simple in comparison with the resplendent amor and silken attendants.

And he had a beard. All Tyroshi had beards, and his was green, a healthy, vibrant green, green as fens, as fresh leaves that he kept meticulously well oiled, an ancient custom that they took seriously but Harry Strickland had never really understood. This Tyroshi had a nose like an eagles beak, and intelligent eyes, too. Disconcertingly intelligent. You looked into them and several layers of person looked back at you.

You could almost overlook the man they were both here to meet, the smiling lothari with hair that was half white, and half red. He was dressed in a robe and sat sprawled jauntily in his chair, a young and feckless man who wasn't yet impressed by the need to be respectful.

Harry Strickland knew that he didn't look like much himself, with his ruddy face, his thinning hair, his expanding paunch. The life of a soldier of fortune had left him neither happy or rich, though it was all he knew, and while he dressed suitable to his station it left him looking more like a caricature than a man to be feared. Everything he owned had been fine and expensive once, but that had been a long time ago. It was why he'd brought the two of the barbarians from the hills, the blond Andals that were fighting for both sides with equal ferocity, in the hope that they could make the impression that he wouldn't.

"You must be Brachelos Flaeroris?" He asked the Tyroshi, not that he had much doubt.

A giant in silvered mail, his extravagant helmet suggesting a a bird of prey with it's hooked beak serving as the visor raised his hand warningly and tugged his helmet open. Like his master, the man seemed to take pride in the extravagance of his beard, he had strands of gold plaited into the blond hairs, and an extravagantly curled and waxed moustache that jutted forward aggressively. Perhaps he ought to be ashamed of his own relatively ragged appearance, but somehow it had the opposite effect. "The Falcon of Tyrosh, Yusseni Flaeroris, has dispatched his brother to negotiate on his behalf." He said sonorously, hand on his sword.

Harry Strickland wondered if he was supposed to bow, or salaam, or kneel, but he'd never been much for either, it was part of the reason he made such a good exile. Doubtless his ancestors had had the same problem, four generations back. "Oh, I'm sorry. Am I supposed to be talking to you?" He asked the big man. He looked like a warrior, but it was hard to tell.

Brachelos Flaeroris merely smiled in a weary way. Half a century of intrigue and warring rested heavily on his shoulders. "I am satisfied. These commitments are reliable, our alliances are solid, and the beginning of our undertaking bodes well." He began, meeting Harry Strickland's gaze. "Though I had expected to meet one of your illustrious company's captains." his head.

That, Harry Strickland thought, rather set the tone for their meeting. "Well, you know who I am, I see, even if I am beneath you. Ser Harold Strickland at your service, paymaster of the Golden Company. I let my friends call me 'Homeless Harry', so you can call me Ser Harold. And who I am speaks for myself. I don't need anyone else to talk for me." He grumbled as his mind worked quickly. More men then he'd thought, or expected. A display of good faith, or a power play? He didn't know. "You may feel it beneath you to talk to me," he continued, his tone growing more indignant. "But as the closest thing to the man in charge still in the city, you need me."

"And since I don't care to live in filth, I require the labours of a dung gatherer, yet I hold him in no great regard either." The archon's green-bearded brother replied haughtily, meeting his gaze, the thin pretense of diplomacy discarded.

He gestured, and another of the men took up the task of conversing with Harry Strickland. Unlike the others, he did not look like a Tyroshii at all. It was difficult to say what sort of man he was, or from whence he came; with his slanted eyes and copper skin he could have been taken for a Dothraki. He wasn't dressed as a warrior, for all that he clearly was one, and more to point he was one who made everyone else in the room look as callow as milkmaids. His garments were simple tunic, short breeches of leather and a camel's-hair mantle which hung from his broad shoulders. There was a solidity to him, he stood with his powerful legs wide braced, and one massive arm ridged with muscles gripped a pilgrim's staff. His long hair added to the Dothraki impression, and from his dark and angular face his strange eyes blazed with a kind of reckless and wayward mirth, reflected by the half-smile that curved his thin lips. The other men paid him the wary deference of men who were afraid but didn't want to admit it. And yet, he could see the steel and leather collar around the big mans neck, that of a slave. A pit fighter from Meereen, perhaps, some great champion from the Great Pit of Daznak? No, there was some other explanation, there had to be. Those men were little better than animals, where this man had such a presence even the brother of the archon seemed less beside him. There was something you saw in the best knights, some quality. You either had it or you didn't, and this man, slave though he was, had it, and had more to spare. "How many men do you have in the city?" The slave asked, his voice slow and careful, betraying an unfamiliarity with the tongue of westeros, and made Harry Strickland wonder why he was the man doing the talking when it was evidently a struggle for him.

"Enough. A solid core of thirty lances - old-timers, like me, from back in Maelys' day. Seasoned men, not prone to impulsiveness. Another thousand soldiers not part of the company proper who we've taken on since. We'll soon see what they are worth." Not much, in his estimation, but they’d be good enough to die; they’d fill a mass grave as well as better men would. They’re just men, just mortal men. Harry Strickland was about to ask the man who he was, in what capacity he was here, but didn't get the chance.

The eagle helmed man with the golden beard chuckled. "Slow thinkers, you mean?" He asked.

"Slow but steady. We get there in the end." Harry Strickland replied sharply.

"There was a bearded star glowing in the sky, which burned for three days." Another of the Archon's brother's entourage said.

"What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"Maybe everything, maybe nothing." Brachelos Flaeroris replied enigmatically. "Those who came before us, our fathers fathers, based an entire philosophy on the stars. They were regarded as the master plan, the sowers of fate, the written story for everything that happens on earth. As they revolve around the planet they see all things, past, present and future. They were thought to be gods."

"Predictable gods, at least." Harry Strickland allowed. Tancred spat, then looked up at them, as though daring them to rush to the defense of the gods of their fathers fathers. Harry Strickland didn't approve of that sort of behavior, though he didn't reprimand the man. You mess with people’s religion and you mess with fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational. "And your promised support?" He demanded, before a fight could brew.

"Is on it's way." The astrologer who'd changed the subject replied. "Our ships have departed already. The Prince has invited us, but we anticipate there might be… difficulties when we march in."

"How many men do you have?" Tyrosh was more famous for it's aggressive merchants then warriors.

"Enough."

"I deal in precision. It's an important quality in a man in charge of livelihoods."

The big man with the golden beard chuckled, shaking his head, and Harry Strickland thought he saw some grudging respect in his eyes.

"Let me say this, then." Brachelos Flaeroris said. "Twenty years ago, your people came, and we were not ready. We were torn by internal divisions and did not recognize what you were. Ten years ago we were not ready, we were divided, fragmented. Weak. Now, now we are ready. Gather your men."

Harry was less than satisfied with that. Extravagant promises were all well and good for seducing a maid, but when it came to conducting a war, they were less useful. "And who are you?" He asked, finally deigning to address the man with the red and white hair.

"A man's name is of no consequence." Came the answer, the handsome young man sounding almost musical. His eyes sparkled with amusement at the two of them, clearly he'd been enjoying their posturing. "Only the name of another. Wishes were made known to a man, whispered in the ears of the dying, and so a man is here, to listen to the name that those who are here desire to send to the Lord of Death."

"Stannis Baratheon." Harry Strickland said sharply, refusing to be drawn into the sort of mystical back and forth the lorathi obviously delighted in. It wasn't that he didn't believe in magic. He'd seen enough things in his life to know doubt never got you anywhere. "Kill him."

The Lorathi's smile became a touch calculating, though his eyes hardened. "A man must think himself a great warrior, to speak so flippantly of death. Especially when the death is for a man in the prime of life, a…"

"You will be paid." The archon's brother interrupted, obviously lacking patience as much as Harry Strickland.

"A man may not like the price."

"Do you take me for some haggling fishwife? You have my word that your price will be met." Brachelos Flaeroris replied, folding his arms belligerently. "That should be good enough for you." 

The presumed assassin paused a moment, then inclined his head. "A man has heard." He said after a moments hesitation. Apparently extravagant promises counted for hard facts when talking to assassins, at least when your brother was the Archon of Tyrosh. "Within a fortnight, he will breathe his last."

"And an old man who thinks he is a lion perched upon a hill. Tell your comrades to work faster."

"It takes time to hear news. Doubtless by now the hill is already taken, and Tygett Lannisters head on a pike. We need only wait for word to reach us."

The archon's brother considered this. "I would have liked to have taken him alive. To have met him, and to kill him myself. Still, you are likely right. A shame, he was a valiant enemy. But so it is."

 

**STEFFON BARATHEON**

 

Hardly anybody was still eating, the sounds giving way to the low, rolling mutter of conversation.

It was the third hour of the welcoming feast that Elbert had thrown, and Steffon had been seated at the other end of the long table where Elbert Arryn hosted his mother and father and the other visiting lords, with the younger of the extended Arryn clan and the rest of Lord Arryn's crop of wards. Steffon's head was buzzing with weariness and elation but he knew he wasn’t drunk, despite the sweet and spiced taste of summerwine filling his mouth.

The fireplaces were banked high; the leaping flames threw strange, capering shadows on the walls as sweating servants hurried in and out. The castle hounds, large and small, barked and scrabbled over discarded scraps and rooted in the straw that covered the floor. A singer was playing a troubadours lute and reciting a ballad, but nobody was paying any attention to him, each was vying to make the loudest toast, the sharpest jest, the biggest spectacle of himself. Elbert's son and heir Percival was too young to preside over all their striving, and he looked up to the rest of them too much to try, so it was Ser Jasper Arryn, just turned twenty, back from the capital and every inch a knight who was the unofficial leader, rewarding the favorites with his attention and occasional laughter. Steffon had always gotten on well with the older boy, he'd even looked up to him a bit because Ser Jasper possessed all those qualities young men aspire to - he was daring, intrepid and acted cool-headed, he was handsome (though not, in most peoples estimation, as handsome as he thought he was), martially inclined and something of a high liver and womaniser. And he was witty - if you took his sharp comments and occasional put-downs as wit, and he was fashionable as well, without seeming effete or dandified as a consequence the way many men did. All of which had meshed with Steffon’s own youthful posturing that he was yet to entirely grow out of. Ser Jasper Arryn was wearing the cloak that he had received at his knighting - felted and thrice-dyed in woad to deepen the blue, and edged with sable. The garment was designed to cover the wearer from throat to ankle in a splendid semi-circular sweep of fabric. Because Jasper was a knight, and like all knights he dressed for battle as he decked himself up for love; he made himself gaudy, he wore gold, mounted a crest of falcon feathers upon his silver-chased helmet, he strutted, he boasted, he showed off. They were all guilty of it.

Steffon didn't know what to make of all this. A man should love peace, but if he cannot fight with all his heart then he will not have peace. Lord Jon Arryn had taught him that, and it had sounded right and wise, but, whatever he wanted, war was upon all of them now. Steffon had been blooded now, he'd killed seven men. Five in skirmishes with the Mountain Tribesmen, one who'd tried to murder him for his horse a year ago, and one who had been very badly hurt in the raid, and had asked him to end his life painlessly. That had taken more courage than the others. A fight was one thing, but to have to plan and think about a death, even a merciful death, was different.

"None of them are much older than me," Edric said, with a child's fear of being left behind. But it was true, Steffon thought. The way we talk, you would think us all immortal.

"You would probably do better than most." Steffon replied. He'd missed his family, he realized. Missed them more than he'd admitted to himself.

"I can hold a lance steadily, and even mother says I'm a fine rider, that I sit a horse as well as anyone." His little brother tried to sit very straight, to make himself seem taller.

Steffon laughed a little, and shook his head to show he didn't mean anything by it. "That's as fine a word as you are ever like to get from anyone. You ought to be proud to get it." He glanced over at his older brother, taking a moment to find him, and raised his cup.

Jon had always been moody, and had grown more so since he'd last seen him. Even now he had left his place at the table, and was standing apart from the young men, watching with a bittersweet, somber air, just beyond the circle of firelight. Something had come over him - earlier in the evening he had danced and drank with the rest of them. "Fine." Steffon told Edric.

"Really?"

"Fine, I'll talk to father. Doubtless I can convince him - you can convince anyone anything, if you can find the right words."

"I…"

"If you say you're ready, you are." Steffon said, before Edric could embarrass himself. "It's as simple as that."

Edric paused a moment, then nodded decisively. "Well, I'm ready."

Further down the table, Jasper Arryn leaned over to say something to Harold Hardyng, a young man with little to his name except blood which did not even come with a name, who sat beside him. “The wildlings might live like animals, but nobody is so poor as to not be worth killing. They have ivory. Amber. Silver and gold." Harold Hardyng replied, and shrugged. They were both to war, everyone at the table was, but it was different wars that they were being dragged to. Tomorrow, one would be going to the South, the other to the North.

"You have a merchant's approach to battle. Do you have a merchant's valor as well?" Alric Stark, heir of the Stark's of Highpoint asked with a chuckle. He was heading North as well, of course. Plenty of them were.

But Harold Hardyng was not offended. The opposite, if anything. “Fight for your lord, fight for his honor, but never forget that you are fighting for yourself too." He replied, and Steffon thought that perhaps that the young man saw more clearly than most.

"Do you know much about the wildlings?" Edric asked him.

"Not much more than you. Mother's stories covered most of it. Some of them are just folks, others mainly differ from wolverines and sabertooth tigers in that they wear britches. At least, some of them do." He grinned. Wine had loosened his tongue a little. "That is to say, some of them differ from wolverines and sabertooth tigers, and some of them wear britches."

Edric chuckled. "But you've fought them?"

"A few times. Mostly, other people have fought them while I was there." He replied honestly.

The Mountain clans weren't all that complex, in his experience, they seemed to think only of drinking mead and stealing each other's cattle - this was the basis of their economy. Some of the larger reiver clans would raid and pillage and extort money out of anyone who lived in the shadow of the foothills, what they called 'black rent', but most hadn't the numbers to seriously attempt it, and stuck with cattle rustling. It had been suggested that they placed higher value upon a brindle cow with large udders than upon an equally buxom young woman.

The land they lived in was uncomfortable, all rocks and moors and sheer cliffs, with here and there a ruined hut. But the Hillmen guarded their land like wolves and eagles. With concentrated effort the land could be convinced to yield a bare sustenance to its folk, but only if they tilled their soil with the same zeal they more habitually put toward killing each other. It was a rare clan that hadn't lost members to grudges and feuds.

He imagined the Wildlings would be much the same, far from the monsters from his mother's stories.

"I can't think they'll be that bad, anyway."

"I have to trust you utterly, don’t I?"

What made him say that, what made him aware of that? Steffon shrugged as if he neither minded nor understood what his younger brother meant; but he was making light of what was true.

By comparison, the table at which the older generation sat had grown subdued. Although they were all doing their best to make conversation, Steffon could see neither Elbert or his father were having any of it. Elbert stared into space, as though fascinated by the tapestries that lined the walls. Robert had become just as unresponsive to the table talk, but his reasons were no mystery. 

It took him by surprise, how much he had missed his family, and that he was only realizing it now.

 "I'll be back," he said out of nowhere, aware of a pressure in his bladder, and got to his feet. He made his way out of the hall to the corridor, feeling more than a little lightheaded. Finally stepping out of the room, the roar of voices rising around him like a flood he took a deep breath, enjoying the relatively clear air. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. He'd wanted to relieve himself, then return to the feast, and to the company.

Of course, innocence only carries one so far. It was curiosity that made him stop, and make his slow and careful way towards the low voices he heard at the end of the corridor.

 

His father was leaning against the wall, looking casual and comfortable, and a dark-haired woman was with him. He could see her a little, she was tall and had broad-shoulders, and was dressed in grey like most of the servants. Her hair was short, and stuck out in every direction.

"How is she?" His father asked, his voice low.

"Old," The young woman replied in all honesty, and he realized with surprise that he recognized her. It was Mya Stone, one of the servants who picked up deliveries and took them up to the Eyrie. She turned, and not for the first time it occured to him heavy-featured she was astoundingly pretty, with a wide, generous mouth, a high forehead and her eyes which were blue-green and extraordinarily large. They gave her a perpetually innocently childlike expression, that shouldn't have fit the rest of her, yet somehow did. "Old, fat and sick."

His father sighed at that news, but didn't look terribly surprised. "I suppose that's the way of it. You know, they start as young girls so beautiful they can break the hearts of a whole kingdom, and after they’ve had a couple of children they mostly all look old, fat and sick." Then he smiled wistfully and cupped her cheek. "Just as well that there's a constant supply of the young ones, eh?" She swatted at him, and he laughed, then he turned a little somber.

"Still, somehow I thought that would never happen to your mother. Strange as it seems, we were both younger than you are now, but she was very special. She was very beautiful of course, a lot like you in that respect. A lot like you in most respects, she was too clever to be a peasant's wife and knew very well what she wanted." He sighed, perhaps a little wistfully, then grinned again. "If only she had better taste, eh? Still, I am proud of you, you know. And I'm sure she is too. I think you might have turned out all right."

"I… I hope so."

"You're my daughter, you know. My firstborn daughter."

"Your firstborn bastard," she replied.

Robert shrugged. "So? Blood is blood, Mya."

"Easy for you to say." It was her turn to pause. "Though I am glad to have yours, my Lord."

"And so you should be, though I was never selfish with my blood before I married. You want to marry this boy?"

"He'll never marry a bastard." She paused. "I mean, I want to, and I know he does as well, but his family won't allow it, and he won't go against them, so…"

"He will if he's got any sense. But marriage is something better to get right the first time. Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Are you afraid I might make a mistake?" Like you did, her glare seemed to accuse.

His father sighed. "I wanted to take you to Storm's End, once. But you had a place here, and Elbert promised he'd keep an eye on you. I stopped visiting. I didn't even think about you as much as I should have. But still, I want to do right by you." He rubbed her head fondly, and she let him. "So, when do I get to meet him?"

She was laughing, as Steffon snuck away.

**DORAN**

 

Doran Martell, who never took comfort in half-measures, had established spies in every quarter of the Seven Kingdoms, including the Red Keep, as well as Dragonstone, and Summerhall, measures he’d had reason to be thankful for having taken, as the relationship between the his own Kingdom and the King had deteriorated steadily. He assumed, seemingly correctly, that his enemies spies subjected his own activities to a scrutiny equally pervasive; therefore, when receiving information from any part of his network he used careful procedures to safeguard the agent's identity.

He received his information by several methods. That morning as he breakfasted in the gardens beneath the lemon trees, he found a small white stone beside his plate. Without comment Doran put the stone in his pocket; it had been placed there, so he knew, by Ser Aldin Dant, the seneschal, who would have received it from a messenger.

After taking his breakfast, Doran had Areo Hotah wheel him a private way through the old armory where a man dressed as a pilgrim was waiting. With a flourish, he removed the agreed upon identification, a small lead soldier, carefully painted that Trystane had played with before he outgrew such things.

"Your brother is being taken to Casterly Rock." He said without further ceremony. "He is uninjured, and like myself is dressed as a pilgrim. He will make it safely, have no fear on that count."

"I am relieved to hear it." Doran exhaled, a tension in his chest unknotting. "He is…

"Your brother is unharmed. There were casualties, House Dalt, House…" Doran waved a hand. "I will listen later. I will grieve later. For now, I will avail myself what joy I can afford to indulge from the knowledge that my brother is still alive."

"Perhaps it would be better if he wasn't. An attempt was made on the king's life. The king moves to address this at the head of an army; all furnished, all in arms. They are boarding the Royal Fleet even now."

Doran knew this already, of course, but he considered afresh, dark eyes glittering. "And us with no ships, save fat-bodied merchants. I would not have thought to find Tywin Lannister to be such a fair-weather friend." He said slowly. "After all his assurances, all his promises. When my daughter was still a child, she and her friends would tell me of their plans to build a palace. And when I told them I thought it to be an excellent idea, and asked what they intended to construct the palace using, they would tell me 'whatever we find'. Then they would wander around, and call the resultant pile of sticks or dirt a palace. Their plan defers from your lords only that their attempts were largely harmless."

"His son is the king's prisoner. He cannot act without the king taking the only response available to him."

"You think I do not understand. I do." Doran told him with a sigh. "I do, all too well. Well, we do as we can and as we must. Perhaps there are a few other mysteries you can help me unravel? Who provoked who, who planned what is a matter of history. I would sooner know the designs of my enemy. Find out who the king depends on. Who he relies upon, and offers his trust. That I must know."

**ROBB**

 

"Have you heard? Apparently Roose Bolton has called his gallant young boy home for your wedding." Alys Karstark was telling him impishly as Robb and Jon 'Smalljon' Umber brushed their horses coats. She was casually idle, leaning against a post and flipping a coin over her knuckles with marvellous dexterity. With Harwin otherwise occupied taking care of the mounts of their fathers plethora of guests, the two boys were left to take care of their own mounts, not that either of them minded particularly.

Jon glanced up, just as interested in this news as Robb was, but Alys was pretending he didn't exist - they must have been fighting again Robb supposed, and so she was fixated entirely on the heir of Winterfell.

"Really? Who'd you hear that from?" Robb asked, pausing in the task to hear more.

"Why from no other than your sister." Alys replied, with a wink. "She got the news herself this morning, and has been gushing about it nonstop." That wasn't so strange, Domeric Bolton had been politely courting Sansa for nearly a year, despite only seeing her twice in that time, and the second for no more then an hour or so. The vast majority of his efforts had been conducted by virtue of pouring his heart and soul into the letters - but that had been quite enough to catch her attention - and fire her imagination. The only son of Lord Roose Bolton had ambitions of being a knight, and so had been sent to the Vale to earn his spurs.

"Apparently the Redforts were at once glad and sorry to see him go." She continued. "The Vale of Arryn proved not to to the taste of Domeric Bolton. Why, we have it from ser Robur Royce himself that Domeric Bolton takes it upon himself to kill some six or seven of the cruelest, most vile Mountain Clansmen at a breakfast, wash his hands, then says to all who will listen before they even start to eat, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work!'."

Robb laughed, and Smalljon snorted. He couldn't help himself, the impression was uncanny. Domeric Bolton had never been a ward, but he had spent enough time in their company for them to get to know him long before he'd gotten designs upon their sister, and Domeric Bolton was everything his father was not - at once chivalrous and completely unrestrained, a slave to passions hot and fiery. He was roused easily to choler and wrath, and once stirred was not easy to cool down at all.

"I imagine Sansa is happy to hear the news." Robb said, still chuckling a little. Sansa was well known to be very enthused at the prospective match. At twenty two, Domeric had just over seven years her elder, though more unequal pairings had been made and would continue to be in the future most likely, and Lord Stark - while yet to formalise the match with a betrothal - seemed content to let it take it's course. As for Lord Bolton, he'd made a formal offer, but wasn't pushing Lord Stark for a formal response, indeed he seemed content to let him take as much time considering the matter as he wanted.

"Oh, fine spirits indeed." Alys assured him. "All but bursting with enthusiasm to see him again." She was somehow endeavoring to say this to Robb, but direct it at Jon. Robb wondered how she did it, and did it in such a way that it seemed as natural as breathing.

"And has father been informed as to this development, or is he going to hear about it the same way?" Robb asked, as Jon was brushing his horse with more force than necessary, his face very red under his beard.

"Your lord father does not confide in me, but perhaps you might ask him. You're his son, after all, and given the trouble you put him to…" Robb glared , but she didn't let that bother her. "Honestly, I don't know, but wouldn't that be something. Perhaps we can look forward to two weddings. However, that is not the only thing to arrive this morning, or even the most interesting one." Alys said, flipping the coin up in the air, then catching it, and putting it away.

"Is that so?" Robb walked around the back of his horse, running his hand down the russet stallion's right, hind leg. The horse obediently lifted the long limb, and Robb poked at its hoof. Jon, having satisfied himself as to his own steeds condition, had left the stall. He looked at Alys a moment, jaw working a little, then threw up his hands and stomped off. Robb was glad, he was worried the two of them were going to drag him into their drama. Lately, he had quite enough drama of his own.

"Some men caught a deserter from the Night's Watch. Your father left to pass justice upon him, taking the gaggle of younger Starks along to see it done." Robb's expression hardened a little. He remembered the first time Eddard had taken him to watch an execution. He hadn't enjoyed the experience, and he hadn't learned to either, though he understood the reasoning for it, just as he understood why Lord Stark swung the sword himself.

"Excepting Rickon?"

"Well, yes. Excepting Rickon."

"How'd Brandon take it?" He didn't ask about Arya, she was tough. Like a leather belt - thin, but you couldn't break it with your hands.

"Like a Stark. Didn't even blink, just watched him die then talked to his father about the nature of courage." Alys replied, having been briefed on the matter in considerable detail with Sansa. "The man was babbling, telling all a manner of stories about wights and dark elves, not making much sense, needless to say."

"Scared men will say all a manner of things." Smalljon Umber said, particularly underwhelmed by this news. He had witnessed more then his share of executions as well.

"I thought you left."

"No."

"Well, if you change your mind…"

Robb cleared his throat before the two could get to bickering.

"Oh, right. Five direwolf pups, gnawing on their dead mothers dry teats. She had died with a piece of antler through her throat."

"South of the wall?" Robb asked, amazed. "How the hell did a direwolf with five pups get past the wall?"

"Might be she gave birth on this side." Alys shrugged. "Don't ask me, I heard about it from Jory."

"Why were you talking to Jory?" Jon asked, but Alys didn't dignify that with a response. "Didn't know there were still direwolves anywhere, on either side of the wall." He added a moment later.

"More likely their father is wandering around wondering where his mate went." Said the stablemaster, making his way over.

Robb opened his mouth to respond, but Jon started speaking before he had a chance to. "What did father do with the pups?" Jon asked Alys.

But it was Harwin who grinned, and pressed a warm, fluffy bundle into Robb's hands. "I believe this is yours."

**CATELYN**

 

The kiss was easy and unhurried, and made a pleasant prelude to slowly stirring desire. Her husband tasted of wine, which was unusual enough that let out a soft sound of surprise. She pretended to nibble on his lower lip, welcomed the touch of his tongue and explored his mouth with her own. His lips were softer then they looked, for all that his beard was a little rough against her skin. When she closed her eyes, he kissed her eyelids, her lashes, and then she felt his mouth move lower, down to her throat.

"There is something magical about a wedding, isn't there?" Ned asked her in a low voice.

Catelyn laughed and tickled his ear with her tongue. They'd made love I more in the past three days than they normally did in the course of a week. At first Catelyn had attributed it to their six-week separation. Now she thought it was more complex than that. The quiet life that her husband loved was a distant memory, there was to be a war, a war like none in living memory, and his every waking hour was weighed down with cares, with choices that offered high risks and little satisfaction.

Their sons upcoming wedding was a welcome relief - Ned had become one of those men who loved it when his friends got married, and his children excited him even more.

While she was distracted, Ned had slipped his hand into the bodice of her gown; he was fondling her breast, squeezing slowly. Catelyn's breath quickened. She could feel her body warming, opening to desire. Her nipple had gone taut against his caressing fingers. She unfastened buttons on his tunic, slid her hand inside his shirt, next to his skin.

"I've an idea," he murmured. "Let's go up to bed."

"At four in the afternoon?" Catelyn teased back. "What, and scandalize the household?"

"Well, then, we'll have to make do here, I suppose. Do you fancy the settle? Or would you rather we threw some cushions on the floor?" His hand was now under her skirts, had begun a slow, intimate exploration up her thigh. Catelyn's arms tightened about him, drew him still closer. "That might be comfortable. What do you think?"

She laughed and, wrapping her arms around his neck, slid down on the settle, shifted her position until she could feel the weight of his body on hers. She had no sense of urgency; anticipation made carnal pleasures all the sweeter, in the extensive experience a long marriage had provided her. But Ned was not so patient, which was unlike him. He lowered his mouth to hers again, and then said coaxingly, "Come, beloved. Let's go upstairs."

"Yes," she agreed huskily. "Oh, love, yes… "

There was a knock on the door. Ned cursed softly, before getting to his feet, and making an attempt to straighten his clothing sufficiently to look presentable. He needn't have bothered, one of Lady Talisa Maegyr's (her formal title not being used in the rather rough northern court) servants was there, his eyes lowered to the floor. Her household was yet to find a balance of coexistence with the rest of Winterfell, and for the most part kept to themselves, unless their lady gave them a task to accomplish. Nobody had made up their mind what to make of them yet, not even Winterfell's Lord. Ned cleared his throat, but the man didn't raise his eyes, yet still managed to project a look of mute entreaty.

There was a world of difference between a Volantene Lady and a Westerosi lady, Ned had realized. The woman his son and heir intended to marry didn't have a language in common with him, and most of her household hadn't been any more successful making themselves understood - all communication required a fluffy haired girl with dark skin named Missandei, who Lady Talisa prefered to keep at hand. The lady herself was bearing things fairly well, considering. Whatever life she'd been expecting when she'd crossed the narrow sea, it was nothing like this at all. Yet she'd done her best to meet the expectations of a northern lady, even if it had not come easily to her at all. And Ned, remembering Cat's own trouble adjusting to Winterfell, was not without sympathy, even if she gave him the impression of being somewhat frivolous.

Which was why he gave his wife a regretful look as she emerged, before following the man out.

**ROBB**

 

The pups had been distributed among Ned Stark's children, one each. They were expected to care for them, to see to their needs, wean them and train them themselves, Harwin had stressed and Eddard had concurred. If they got near the kennels, the dogs would tear them apart in a heartbeat. Eddard had thought to kill them, but apparently Brandon had talked him out of it.

"It's a little ridiculous. You don't see me carrying a bear around everywhere I go." Alysane Mormont mentioned, gesturing at the pup. She was dressed in a green dress that suited her fairly well, though unlike her older sister who was cool and elegant and poised even in chainmail, Alysane was obviously uncomfortable. Her cascade of tangled hair was brushed out of her face, but that was the extent she was willing to work with it.

"Not that I've noticed, no." Robb replied, the tiny little animal trotting at his heels, it's little legs having to work furiously to keep up. "Would you like one?"

She didn't respond to that. They crossed the courtyard in silence.

"What are you going to call it?" She asked eventually.

"Haven't decided yet."

"I got a few ideas, if you want to sound it out."

"No sense in rushing things like this. I'll name it when I think of something."

"How about…"

"Tell you what. Should we find you a bear of your very own, you can name that anything you want."

"What would I do with a bear? My family are enough trouble already, without adding an actual bear." She replied, already sick of that stupid joke and wishing she'd never made it. "I might wear a bear on my clothes, but the truth is they're either lazy or aggressive, and neither mood is much use most of the time, and anyway if you are unfortunate enough to get on the bad side of one, it will eat you whether you have one sewn on your shirt or not."

"I'd have thought the same about a direwolf." Robb admitted, then shrugged. "Now I've got one following me around." He felt as though there was a significance to this, an importance that he was shy of comprehending. That the direwolves had been left there for a reason, and if they could only make sense of what that reason was. It seemed absurd to imagine they'd been there by coincidence, that there happened to be a direwolf for all of Eddard Stark's children. But if it did have some deeper meaning, he was damned if he could figure out what it meant, beyond that he now had a pet.

"Why is your sigil a bear anyway?" He asked, despite himself.

"Why a direwolf?" She replied with a shrug. "Probably meant something to someone once. Now it's just because that's the way it's always been."

"There you are." Sansa appeared in a whirl of skirts. "Arya's throwing a tantrum." Sansa she continued before he had a chance to respond, in a tone that made it clear she expected him to do something about it, since she had no idea how to resolve it herself. Obviously she was in one of her brisk moods. The trouble in question turned out to be the Godswood. Robb had always liked visiting it, finding it a peaceful place to get away from everyone else and get in touch with his thoughts. Beneath the thick canopy of the godswood, the sounds of the castle seemed muted, dulled and distant. Golden rays of sunlight streamed through the dense, dark foliage as Sansa strode beneath their boughs, while Theon and Jon followed more slowly. Hard ironwoods and ancient oaks grew thick in this godswood, and tangled roots jutted out through the dark soil. A breeze rustled the leaves and pines of the wood, yet they did not feel it down amongst the tree trunks. There was a dark, silent tranquility in the godswood this day.

At last they came to the grove in the heart of the Godswood, and the great tree carved with a long, drawn, melancholy face. It stood, silent and implacable, with its boughs drooping over a cold, dark pool of black water. The whole godswood of Winterfell felt old, of course, an age that couldn't be calculated but the weirwood heart-tree felt ancient, full of deep memory, old like the darkness and the stars. Sansa stopped beneath the bone-white trunk, hands on her hips as she stared up past the sap-filled red eyes to the canopy of red leaves.

"Come down from there, Arya." Sansa called out.

For a moment there was no response, then a voice answered from deep up in the cannopy. "I don't want to."

“We are supposed to set a good example,” said Sansa patiently. “As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree."

“Then I am a lady of refinement indeed,” said Arya tartly, “since I did not wish to be found.”

Sansa sighed. "We've found you."

"Only because you're not minding your own business."

"See? She's impossible. Do something Robb." She repeated.

"Should I advise her to listen to you? Or should I fetch a ladder?"

Sansa shot him a look, and it was all Robb could do not to chuckle she looked so much like Catelyn. Dacey, amused by the situation afterall, tapped her fist against the trunk twice. "Isn't climbing more Brandon's idea of a game then yours, Arya Underfoot?"

Arya didn't respond. There was a rustle, as she repositioned herself in the branches.

**YGRITTE**

 

Cold. Bloody cold.

Ever since they had crossed the green country toward the high moors on the horizon where the game grew fat, the two of them had been guided by the greyish-white wall of mountains and their snow-capped summits which glistened gold in those rare moments the sun pierced the cloud; in the morning, or just before sunset if they were lucky.

They were being careful. The foothills of the mountains were every bit as treacherous as the mountains themselves, but it was the cave people rather than dizzying heights of bitter cold that took men’s lives with such regularity. Weeper ruled these parts, and those loyal to him would kill without thought for his favor.

Beyond that they followed a little river between steep wooded hills, and left behind the poppy-lit fields. The way grew steeper; above, the high, flat peak could just be glimpsed was shrouded in cloud and mist. Both of them knew the moors well enough. The ground cover was all heather and gorse, brilliant violet and gold in the summer, but already frozen. The air was still; foamy, scattered clouds swung low in the sky. The lowest clouds tore on the summit of the hill they were climbing, making a shredded curtain of mist beyond which nothing was visible.

They stopped. Neither had brought horses. It had slowed them considerably.

Ygritte had scaled these peaks once before, to prove that she was strong enough to endure the freezing storms and isolation, and the hallucinations that sometimes rode on the winds that came before a blizzard. It was the initiation that every true warrior had to undergo - and though she had gone this long without ever admitting it to anyone and didn't see any reason to change that now Ygritte knew she had barely survived that first time. Now, even with the massive caribou skin wrapped around her again and again into layers of padded leather, it felt as if death was trying to drag her bones away, and they were only beginning.

"Twice has this crow turncloak, this Mance Rayder made head against my power, and twice now, from the banks the sandy-bottomed Antler River I sent him home with naught but his boots and the cloak he turned." Tormund growled to her, obviously the exercise having put him in a garrulous mood. Tormund thunder-fist, husband to bears, forbidding and forgiving, who since he was too young to shave had held a few tottering and assaulted peoples together as a single, peaceful land. It was cruel, of the gods, to put him through this, Ygritte thought. "Yet here I am, dragging myself to him on my belly."

She didn't say anything. She let him talk, let him get this out of his system.

”I find this hard to admit." Tormund managed to say. "I’ve never feared any man trying to kill me because I know I’ll kill him first. But Mance… there's something about him. Something that makes me apprehensive. Still, it cuts at my pride to come to him now, and to bend knee. Had I a choice…"

He sighed, and shook his head.

"I can fight Mance." He announced, decisively, as though anyone doubted it. "I can fight Styr and his thenns, or Karsi and her horses and chariots, or whoever else he has trained to bark whenever he snaps his fingers." Tormund declared. "I fought them all before they learned to follow him like dogs. But it's not Mance we'll be fighting. Not once the wind blows down from the north, and the long cold comes."

The wind whistled, and howled. Pale mists shrouded the black earth ahead.

They entered the fog. Beads of water hung like amethysts on the heather. Behind them where the ground fell away the cloud came down like a screen, hiding the countryside below. Only the river could be seen, a shining streak of light slashing through the white wall of fog at an incongruous angle. The mist hid the land between them and the river, and the faraway line of water looked as though it were suspended in midair.

"Why does it glitter?" She asked.

He grunted in response. "The sun is shining down there," he replied at long last. "It’s only we who are in cloud."

They moved on. The heather gave way to bare peat now, and the country became strange. Behind they could still see the river, a wire of pure silver suspended in the white, empty air.

They moved over scree, over an enormous heap of stones washed down by glaciers and streams, and into a narrow pass between rocky outcrops. The gorge walls rose vertically and seemed to meet high above her, only divided by a narrow line of sky. It grew warmer, the wind howling above the rocks above could no longer reach to lash and sting at them.

Sudden gullies of water gushed here and there over dark slides of earth. They no longer climbed, following almost level ground along the edge of the top of the hill. Vast outcroppings of rock loomed out of the fog, looking at first like huts or groups of people or withered trees, then becoming stones again as they passed by. They stepped cautiously hesitant to trust their footing on low clots of turf that rose above the mud and were rooted together by clumps of short, coarse grass. Three gray birds flew off into the mist in a flurry of clapping and cracking wings, and they occasionally heard the loud, strident crying of some disturbed bird - all they had encountered by way of other living beings. At last we came to a wide, flat, shallow stream with unexpectedly white sandy banks like the mouth of a river; on the near bank stood a cairn of piled loose rock. The two of them added a few pebbles to the cairn, drank from the stream, and ate a luncheon of honey, bread, cheese, and eggs. They talked while they ate, for when they had been silent too much along their journey, and the silence had made them aware of how alone they were, and how lost we could be.

Ygritte looked up at the sky. The growing cold and increasing wind could herald an early blizzard, and she did not find the prospect of another night in a grotto or rocky nook huddled against her fathers brother for warmth too attractive.

The path ahead lead through a ravine and then into a valley, opening onto a huge depression, covered by forest which stretched out amidst jagged boulders. The mountains, hard and unforgiving, stretched all around him in towering blades of stone. The chasms between them were so dark they looked bottomless. They skirted the border of the cliffs which were high and forbidding, and sheer - stretching so far down the ground far below was lost in cloudy mist, a sheet of gray stone like the edge of the world.

"Look at that…" Tormund growled, his voice shaking a little. The camp spread out before them.

Do you really believe in this horn?" Ygritte asked, all of a sudden.

Tormund shrugged. "What does it matter? That, there? That's survival. And it's the only survival we're likely to be offered. Sometimes, you need to be realistic about your chances."

They entered the camp all at once, one moment they were creeping down the foothills, the next they were making their way past wayns and carts and sleds. Some had had thrown up tents, of hide and skin and felted wool, but many more sheltered behind rocks in crude lean-tos, or slept beneath their wagons pulled by horses and aurochs, by reindeer and other creatures they'd managed against the odds to domesticate. Very few of them looked anything like warriors, but very few of them were. This wasn't an army, this was a nation on the move.

Runners and messengers had gone in every direction across the mountains, from to everyone they could reach between the coastlines. They each bore the same message, written in blood and charcoal on flayed skin as a sign of the sender’s seriousness.

They said that survival was to the south, and all blood-vengeance and honour-debts would be cancelled with regards to those who would join them. The proposal even extended to those who had been enemies forever, like the blood-drinking cave people who lived in the darkness and did gods knew what, or the Thenns, whose forges supplied tools and whose crops fed trade out of the valleys where they had settled, but who scarred their faces and supplemented their diets with human flesh.

At first the replies were flat refusals or elaborate insults, recollecting long-distant battles or massacres that made any alliance impossible. But somehow this crow turncloak, this Mance Rayder, this man who intended to be King, had got them listening, until the replies were offers of warriors, or weapons, or the allegiance of whole tribes. Lesser tribes who had not even been contacted began asking if they could have the honour of joining them, spoiling for a fight, and gravitated towards the growing encampments in the foothills where the milkwater ran as though drawn by the scent of conflict.

Ice-River Clans and Hornfoots, massively muscled hairless thenns, whose faces were patterned with scars and who rode shaggy horses and wore scales of bronze but carried iron axes. Chariots from the Frozen Shore. Mance Rayder's army had swelled until it was not an army any more, but the gathered anger of a new nation, the Free Folk at last united not by a ruler’s conquest but by a mad, hysterical desperation to survive what was coming out of the North. And it had happened almost by itself - as if it was always meant to be, waiting in the souls of every one of them.

By the time Ygritte brought Tormund to the camp, Mance Rayder's army was two hundred thousand souls strong.


	14. Stannis, Golden Company, Daenerys, Lancel

**STANNIS**

The next day emerged out of the darkness in a damp grey dawn. One of the men, who Stannis had judged to have taken a light enough wound, suddenly turned his face to the wall and died. Nobody Stannis talked to could tell what it was he had died of, and he could tell that they were, themselves, lacking spirit. Stannis had never been anywhere that he hated quite so much as No-Mans Land in the Golden Hills. And his anger had grown steadily with each day of chaotic movement, and now as he waited it simmered.

Dawn found a surly company, sour from too much wine and too much marching. The horses were tired, and the oats were not enough to raise their spirits. Pages stumbled, half asleep, along the lines. To add insult to injury, a light rain began to fall on men who’d slept with no tents and a single blanket. Only some of the men his brother had promised had arrived - most who weren't with Robert were with Renly, marching on Dorne besides the king. But then, he'd left most of his own men as well, taking only those he could move quickly without roads. The country they had traveled through was practically deserted and strategically unimportant, covered in huge, dense forests unappealing to invading armies. Although the enemy was close at last, they were yet to see much sign of either army - Pentos' or Tygett's.

War was less spectacular than it had been closer to the free city, where the horizon had glowed with fires at night, and during the day columns of black smoke had slashed the sky, plains burned flat by last year’s battles and now choked with raspberry bushes and alder clumps. Which was not to say it was undisturbed - just the day before his outriders had suddenly come across a murder of crows circling over the forrest with a horrible cawing, and investigation had turned up some corpses. Although the bodies had been stripped of their clothing and were impossible to identify beyond the broadest of strokes, they bore the infallible and clear marks of violent death. Most had been left where they fell, but some, cruelly mutilated, hung from trees by their arms or legs, lay sprawled on burnt out pyres, or were impaled on spikes. And they stank. They stank so bad it was a wonder the whole of Essos did not stink with barbarity.

Since that ugly moment, Stannis had found himself thinking more and more frequently of Lysa, their three children and the newest on the way, and what sort of world it was to bring another life into. It proved a fine way to torture himself, but he came no closer to resolving it as they rode or marched through the wilderness, almost three thousand men strong in a long column, a forest of spears and standards undulating over their heads. The drums growl, and the soldiers voices boom and rattle as they try to keep their spirits up. Patrek Selmy's horse-archers in the vanguard, with horn bows scabbarded by their sides and coats of plates or steel scale over light armor, as well as Ser Balain Storm and his men to talk to any locals, not that it proved necessary.

The weather had been fine for two days, as if to lure them onward, and then it turned to high winds and heavy rain, which poured onto the rocky ground, and drained away. Starting fires became a sort of test of arms, of prowess and will, and it was there that the archers (a hundred men or so) who Robert had sent at the beginning of the season became heroes - most had been foresters, and had the skill to make dry wood and light fires in any weather, and an army owed them and little comfort they had. Everyone was soaked to the skin, ill-tempered and bug-bitten.

Men had sickened. Horses had sickened. And the rain fell and fell. Nobody attacked them, not The Golden Company, not partisans, nobody, because only madmen would be out in that rain. Patrek Selmy, who had been recovering well enough to ride, sickened again. Several men with wounds took fevers.

Rain, freezing rain, proved itself once again to be the absolute enemy of armoured men. The cold water found it's way into every joint in the harness, and little by little the cold wetness seeped it's way into arming clothes, and once they were soaked they could not get warm. A man could throw himself into a fire, and before he burned to death he still wouldn't be warm, or so it seemed to Stannis, who had taken to wearing a badly cured sheepskin in the hopes of keeping the rain off.

In a village in the Golden Hills, debated land which nobody seemed to know whether the Prince or Tygett Lannister held sway, they took two great stone barns, and got the little army warm and dry. Patrek Selmy's fever broke, the red marks around Meryn Trant's arm wound retreated a little, they were all better for it. But they didn't stay long, the villagers were surprisingly hostile; they didn't even have the usual thin skin of traders and obsequious turncoats to pretend they were saviours. Last time he had come this way, they had rather liked them on balance. Now they wanted nothing to do with the Westerosi. Stannis had intended to leave his wounded there, but he abandoned those plans even if it did slow down the entire column. He had been afraid that the villagers would murder them.

They had camped the last night in a gentle rain. Camp was a euphemism, he had horses with hoof rot, men with inflamed wounds, and supplies stretched thin. His joints were so stiff it hurt to dismount, and both of his hands were infected. Nobody slept - there was nowhere to sleep, even for veterans, and water flowed over bare rock. But they'd arrived.

That had been a week ago, and there had proved no crossing the river, so wide with rains and so tortuous that Stannis feared his army would sink into the mud rather than approach. The enemy knew they were there, if not precisely where to find them.

His tent was a massive circle of thick canvas and timber frame made from two sails, their linen yellow and patched and threadbare after years of service at sea. They made for a shabby shelter, even with the stockade which had been built around it, and the sentries at the entrance, the two men as still and silent as the wooden stakes of the fence, but that was typical of Stannis Baratheon - although born in a great family and a rich man, as well as a cousin to the king, he had always despised gaudiness, and so it was an obscure point of pride that he looked as patched and threadbare as the sails that made his tent, or the palliasse of straw that made his bed.

In Stannis' experience, an army was defined by it's great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction - his men had to scavenge for food, camped out somewhere with a rising water level because he had told them to, with only their faith in their commanders, their faith in him, keeping them in place.

That faith would be tested, and sorely, as he shifted them abruptly in the middle of the night into some indefensible position, never really giving them the chance to sleep. Their equipment was defective, the archers were all either drunk or praying, the arrows were on the way but not here yet, and their minds were occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because whoever was in charge today didn't seem to be very good at the basic business of thinking.

You could always fight in the summer, if you felt like it. Fighting now was more of a challenge.

"The Golden Company will assault the hill again tomorrow." They'd learned the difficulty of co-ordinating a night attack with an army of mostly amateurs, and wouldn't be trying that again. It was Ser Jon Fell speaking, beside his bastard brother, a good knight if a bit slow, and another Ser Storm, one of lord Fell's children by another woman. The Fells clearly had no problem siring children, and they were all big, strong men.

Ser Fell was the fourth son of a fifth son with a face, men said, like the backside of a bull, but the face mirrored his soul, which was blunt, brave and straightforward. The army liked him, because he was as tough as they were themselves. Stannis liked him as well, because he was not a bloody fool, even if he had a tendency to repeat the obvious. Stannis shivered. He might not have minded the cold so much had the army been enjoying successes, but for a fortnight they'd been on the wrong side of the river, eating leanly and fighting indecisive engagements, a footnote in a battle taking place before their eyes. His commanders, the men he had taken with him from Pig-Barter with him, were all watching him.

Most of those captains were knights, who led their own men to war, Men like Ser Raymun Darry, an easy man to like and to trust. He had the beautiful manners of the Royal court, and his family were friends of Lysa's father’s family. And friends of the King. Or men like Ser Brus Buckler, who was dressed in his arming jacket and cleaning his nails with a dirk as long as most men’s riding swords, his shining eyes reflecting the glow like the eyes of a real fish in the light of a torch on the bow of the boat. But there were a handful of men of a different sort. There were a number of mercenary soldiers who had contracted their men to his service. Three were Free Companies, led by Pentoshii who had once called themselves 'Windblown' and still wore white ribbons as badges of their leal service to the Tattered Prince and led men loyal to him - that ornament of King Rhaegar Targaryen's court that his father had declared rightful ruler of Pentos and Lord Paramount of Andalos, not that anyone really believed that any more. Others were from back home, commoners who had grown hard in war. Skeat was there, and Dickon, who had begun his service as a man-at-arms and now led a hundred and forty knights and ninety archers in his service. Neither man had ever fought in a tournament, nor would they ever be invited, neither had even a second name, but both were wealthier than ser Fell, and that clearly rankled the knight a little.

"My hounds of war', Stannis called his independent captains, and he seemed to like them as much as he liked anyone, but then Stannis had a curious taste for vulgar company. He might be cousin to the king, but he would break bread and offer his trust to men like that. Gusts of wind beat against the side of the tent, while Ser Darry raised his mug. "To the whoreson's confusion" he announced in his booming voice.

The men echoed his words and drank, although the wine was cold and the day even colder. The wind flew and ruffled the canvas: Stannis seemed to be under attack from all sides, every choice as bad as the others.

"They've been menacing each other for a two weeks, only threatening one another with harsh language. What makes you think they're committed?"

"They've done everything else they can to force Lord Tygett off the hill. They've encircled him, they've pressed him, but so far nothing has worked."

Stannis grunted.

It wasn't a response, but his clerk made a note of it anyway. The poor man had the unlikely and unfortunate name of Chubbs - as well as the remnants of an upbringing in a sept and his own open nature which made him believe in people, in their goodness, kindness and selflessness. Even marching with an army was yet to entirely disabuse him of that faith.

The privations of camp life, and the anxiety of dealing with the mercenaries and soldiers, had succeeded where piety and fasting never had, and melted the fat from him. He looked like a man who had stolen a suit of skin that was two sizes too big.

One of the Ser Storms took Stannis’s parchment chart of the Golden Hills, rolling it out on the table. All the knights present drew their daggers, rondels and baselards, and placed them on the edges to pin the stiff hide in place and keep it from rolling up at the edges. Stannis pointed at the hill, on which Tygett was sorely pressed.

"The Golden Company sent ten thousand men. Most are green, but there is a core of veterans. They have five or six hundred lances and a strong infantry force."

"That is our best estimate, and it is now three days old."

Captain Dickon leaned forward. He glanced at Stannis, who met his eye, silently encouraging him to speak. “We can take them,” he said. "But only if we time it right. Not in a direct engagement, only when they commit their forces. Then we shall be the hammer, and Tygett shall be the anvil."

Stannis went on to lay out his plan in what detail he had. Nobody seemed pleased to be relegated to waiting this out. Ser Brus Buckler sat back, sheathed his big dirk with an audible click, and put his booted feet out, his silver spurs rattling as he did. He steepled his hands, and waited until he had everyones attention. "It is a foolish plan. We know it is, all of us. It also happens to be all that we have, made with clay and straw though it is. Because we all know what we ought to do is retreat to Stormpike, let the Golden Company bleed itself white killing Tygett, absorb what's left of his lands and take his peasants for ourselves and raise our own army. We ought to, but that would play directly into their hands. We would fight a long war in our territories, not theirs. If we pull this off instead, we can save all that we've won from war. And that, gentlemen, is our duty as knights." He paused. "Does anyone have any problem with that?"

There didn't seem anything left to say.

"Well then. I suggest we get ourselves into order. Our moment is coming."

 

**GOLDEN COMPANY**

Ten thousand men, a fifth of the Golden Company's core and most experienced men, reinforced by the Andal Auxiliaries that had joined them for their own reasons, the Guard of the Prince of Pentos and the slave soldiers and raw recruits scraped up from wherever they were to be had for the taking were drawn up in parade-ground order on the gentle slope of grass and shingle that led to the hill that had seen so many slaughtered trying to take. Ser Toyne had marshaled the men - mercenaries, sailors under the command of an adventurer named 'Groleo', Andal barbarians who wore their hair and mustaches long and were fearsome beyond belief for all that many of them carried no shields and wore no armor or boots or much of anything except trousers, anchored in their center by a core of men, nearly a hundred of them, who were supposed to be the Prince's bodyguards and wore armor that looked more decorative than functional but carried enormous axes that were most definitively not, as well as all the attendant camp-followers. They faced towards that position. Towards Tygett Lannister, and his army.

They were arrayed in three thick lines that covered the first slope of the green grass of the hills. The first line, according to their commander's notions, was composed of fodder - raw recruits and slave soldiers committed by the magisters of Pentos, men who were poorly outfitted and poorly led,not without courage (Ser Rivers knew) but needing skilled command to be given a chance to demonstrate, and having little idea what to do - how to form a shield wall, what the signals meant, even in some cases how to fight. In the second line he put all the men except his knights - willing or unwilling - the Andals in their tribal bands who had come for loot, for fame, or for fear, some of whom had painted their faces blue and spiked their hair with lime. The mercenaries and the tame routiers. His own men made up the third line.

The right flank was anchored by Ser Darklyn's warband, his dark knights with scars and tattoos and deerskin surcoats, with teeth filed to points and the sides of their heads shaved. Ser Gerold Dayne was with him, mounted beneath his black banner with the motto “Enemy of the Gods, Mercy and Justice” in gold. Ser Rivers thought that by choosing words like that he was trying rather too hard to be as big a monster as the man he'd chosen for his mentor, and came off more like a child trying to impress his elders without really comprehending what he was saying and what he was giving up, but he hadn't bothered telling the man that.

It was one thing to ignore words, even ones that lessened him and everything he believed in by association. It was another to live in the world of men, and soldiers, where, from time to time, some churl tested your manhood just to see if you were all that men say that you were, or because he himself felt lacking something and desired to see whether you lacked it as well. He had enough quarrels with the men without picking more.

The two of them, Ser Darklyn and Gerold Dayne, were nominally in charge of a strong company of routiers with their own captains and command structure; still it was Ser Jorah Mormont who led the brigans, men as hard and as rough as Ser Darklyn's men, and if not as savage then through no fault of their own but merely a lack of opportunity.

It had been a long time since Ser Rivers had seen so many arrayed for battle in one place and at one time. There was no bringing elephants or siege weapons through the trackless wilderness, so they were less supported then he liked to be when throwing himself at a fortifies position, but Balaq had command of nearly a thousand archers, tall, strong men and women with heavy javelins and heavier bows, and that would have to be enough - or at least, it was all that they were going to get.

Above their massed ranks a thicket of spears and barbed pole-arms jutted. There was only one standard (saving Ser Dayne's), golden pennants decorated with the golden skulls of dead captain-generals, snapping and rattling respectively in the stiff breeze, proudly displaying several generations of battle honors. Here and there mounted officers in expensive harness waited to hear orders and give them, swords shouldered.

Their leader rode out before them. Ser Toyne looked far from fresh. He had been up all night. He had tried arguing, tried insisting, tried dramatic gestures and appeals and everything else. None of it did any good. Ser Toyne was a good teacher in the ways of war, and well worth listening to as he planned. But the fat man was out of patience, and had firmly made his displeasure clear. A long siege was no longer acceptable - he would see the matter resolved, and immediately, then the army was to break up-to feed off a larger swathe of the Golden Hills and to inflict more terror and more damage. He had suggested other options, and the fat man had shook his head. “That is very like wanting to be in a state of indecision, Ser Knight. In this case, we take the hill, or we reap the consequence of facing a united foe.” And he was right, curse him. But that didn't mean they had to like it.

Ser Rivers puffed his cheeks out as he looked at the massed ranks. He was grateful for his pipe, it gave him something to do with his hands, to keep them from shaking, though the autumn rains had left him with no hope of lighting it. Ser Toyne inclined his head. They embraced - carefully - so that the men could see them do it, then they mounted up. He was grateful for his old friend. Save for his good squires - the company of his peers - even near peers - was somewhat lacking. There was Ser Flowers, who was slow of thinking and did whatever he was told, there was Ser Kevan Darklyn who was quite mad, there was Ser Gerold Dayne who was coarse and vulgar and a braggart, and a dozen like them. Of the knights that made up the commanders, only Marq Mandrake was anything close to a gentleman. Harrald Summer - tall and with fading copper hair and the biggest nose of any man that he had ever met, was a lord, a Jarl. But he was still unsure of his rank in the army, cautious in ceremonial. And even if he had been knighted, Oznak zo Pahl wasn't any sort of conversation partner. The less said about the rest, the better.

Ser Franklyn Flowers and Ser Marq Mandrake rode up to join them, joined a moment later by Black Balaq looking splendid in his gold and feathers. Maybe he really was a king, Ser Rivers thought with a smile. He certainly held himself with the poise of an emperor. "Well, we're all here. Now what?" He asked, knowing that their long friendship would excuse his overfamiliar tone which verged on disrespectful, and that nobody could hear them much who wasn't supposed to.

Ser Toyne wrinkled his nose fastidiously at his old friend's coarseness, before he drew his sword, a blade made in Qohor, quick and light and yet strong as a branch of oak in his hand, and the steel shimmered like silk in the morning light.

"Wait." He said, and so they did.

At last, the fat man joined them, their hope in tow. He was armored as a knight, Ser Rivers saw with approval, for all that he made a figure more ridiculous than martial. While the rigors of the camp had melted him back, her was still near as wide as he was tall.

“This is how it is." Ser Toyne said. "We can fall back a way, and make a base for ourselves in one of the abandoned forts. We can fill the frontiers with blood all autumn, keep these peasants from their fields, and strike where we wish until every cabin is burned and they have no reserve of manpower to fell his trees. We can keep their forces in the field until the cost breaks them. We can butcher the little people until they know their lords cannot protect them.”

“They can do the same to us.” Ilyrio Mopantis replied in a neutral turn of voice.

Ser Toyne nodded. “You have more then they do. You will not miss them so much.”

This argument didn't appease the fat man at all. “This strategy of yours - it is no use. Not to me, and not to Pentos. Do not bring it up again.”

Ser Toyne, who had served plenty of princes, nodded. “It never is, but I always offer it. Very well.”

“Now, offer me another choice,”

“You can always fling your army recklessly at this rock of earth and wood,” Ser Toyne said. His contempt was obvious. “We will crack it, in time. Still, most of this army will die here. We've tested the defenses, spent two weeks testing them. They are good and tested, and that is my conclusion. We would win, but most victories aren’t worth the sweat of a single dead man, and that is like to be one of them."

“I  _understand._  Give me another  _choice_."

Ser Toyne frowned. “We could move north, around the position. On a wide front, so that we could overwhelm any opposition, surround and crush it in the mountains. Bypass any other strong points.” He shrugged. “Try to cut the road off further along. Then our problem becomes their problem: supply.”

Ilyrio Mopantis was not much of a soldier, but he'd made his fortune taking risks and had a keen appreciation for logistics. “Our numbers would be our downfall - we'd never feed so many men. What of the east?” Ilyrio Mopantis asked.

“There is another force in the east, but it’s on the other side of the river and too small to affect us.” Ser Toyne shrugged yet again. “I think he wants us to go east. Instead, I’d put two or three thousand of the men the magisters generously sold us, and fling them into the entrenchments all day. They can die slowly, and we’ll win along the road and push the battle back to here.”

“You are reckless in expending them,” Ilyrio Mopantis said, surprised.

“That’s what they are for, surely?” Ser Toyne shrugged. “They are fodder. But in mass waves, they will tie down any force left here-while we turn his flank.”

"And yet you are concerned at the idea of throwing this army at the defenses."

“You confuse the killing of useless mouths who lower the condition of my men with the waste of precious soldiers, without whom there is no victory,” he said coldly.

Ilyrio Mopantis nodded. “I suppose I do. They all look the same to me - I've never trafficked in slaves, and soldiering seems to be much the same.”

“Retreat, and fight another day,” Ser Toyne said. “That is my advice.”

“No,” said Ilyrio Mopantis.

“Then north, around them. As soon as we can.” Set Toyne took a breath. “Into the woods. Leave behind most of the auxilaries, perhaps half. Let them go forward against the ridge.”

Ilyrio Mopantis shook his head. “No. We did not come all this way to leave with nothing to show for it.” he declared. "Give me a workable alternative, or stop wasting time and forward."

Ser Toyne paused. “We have odds of four or even five to one or better,” he said. “If we are very lucky and we move fast, there will be no great battle. They’ll simply fold away and be massacred as we turn their positions-or stand and starve. If our auxiliaries break through - then we win a massive victory and the whole enemy force is massacred.”

Ilyrio Mopantis seemed for a moment to whisper to someone else. “And if we are not lucky?”

“It will be a terrible battle in the wilderness.” Ser Toyne pursed his lips. “A fight unlike any I have ever seen. No possible way to predict the result, not when two broken lines meet and it is indiscriminate slaughter, though by the numbers the odds would favor us.”

"That will be acceptable." Ilyrio conceded.

Ser Toyne turned in the saddle. His sword was still in his hand. "So be it." He said, no longer addressing the fat man. "Keep the river to our right side." To illustrate, he traced the twisting channels and sandbars with his sword. It would have made for a splendid painting, but the practical considerations were what concerned Ser Rivers. "I expect they will have skirmishers hidden about there, who will engage the force we commit to hold them in place."

"It's what I would do." Agreed Ser Rivers. "Who are we sending?"

"Ser Jorah and Ser Darklyn will keep their men back to support any units that are engaged by the enemy." Ser Toyne replied, with a faint smile. "You will have overall command."

Ser Rivers didn't know whether to be honored or horrified, and before he could make up his mind the outstretched sword drifted up towards the copse of trees, beginning on the sloping ground at the base of the hill. "Doubtless, they'll meet success. However, I anticipate resistance as they pass through the trees - they'll serve as cover, however, so once they've been taken then the lines will be reformed in their shelter."

Once they've made us bleed for them, Ser Rivers thought. There was more to war than numbers, and they'd suffer, taking that position.

"Once the foothills are in our hands…" His sword drifted implacably up the bare hillside, pointing out the smaller stones on the southern spur, then the larger ones on the summit, illustrating the path of least resistance. then let his sword drop. "We scale the hill. They have nowhere to run."

"A direct attack?"

Toyne gave him a cold look. "They’ve been up there better part of a month. There will be stakes planted, and ditches dug, pits and nets and caltrops, there will be walls, and archers showering them with arrows, and…" he trailed off into a grimace, looking as though there were arrows showering on him already. "I don't expect them to take the hill, necessarily. The important thing it to convince them we do, and to fix them in place. The east is impassable, thanks to the river, but the west is not. If we can find a way through, we can force an opening there while they are tied up."

Ser Rivers did not argue. But he looked far from convinced.

"Sometimes the simplest solution is the best." He wondered who 'Blackheart' was trying to convince. Then he wondered if anyone else was going to say anything.

"True, though, I mean …" Ser Rivers took a deep breath as he frowned up towards the hill, a black mass against the stained and overcast sky It would rain later, he was sure. "Well, ours not to reason why. Do you think they're ready for us?"

"They have been for weeks, now."

"Do you suppose we could call that dawn?"

Ser Rivers shrugged his broad shoulders, battered armor rattling faintly.

"Would you call that dawn, my liege?"

Aegon Targaryen blinked at the sky. Over in the east the heavy clouds had the faintest ominous tinge of brightness about their edges. "Yes, or near enough as to make no difference." His voice was a pathetic squeak and he cleared his throat, rather embarrassed, and attempted to look more befitting a rightful king.

Ser Toyne leaned close and patted his shoulder. "There’s no shame in being scared. Bravery is being scared, and doing it anyway."

"I've heard that. I think it would be easier not to need to be scared."

"Just stay close beside me. Do your duty, and all will be well." He raised his sword again and directed its point towards the scattering of stones high above them. "Company!" He called out. "Forward!" And like that, the men started up the slope.

 

**DAENERYS**

On the battlements of the Red Keep, Princess Daenerys was standing with one of the King's spiritual advisers, looking across the flaming water of sunset that reflected the spires and turrets and pennons hanging motionless in the calm air.

The world was laid out before the two watchers like a canvas painting or a mural, for they were on a high keep which dominated the city where her ancestor Aegon had landed three hundred years ago. The princess had no fear of heights, anymore than the woman in red.

She was a young woman, just on the threshold of life. The red woman only appeared that way. She was old, not old like a person, not old like a city. Old like the darkness and the stars.

"All this because of Elia." She sighed. "Yet I can't blame her, not really. She was given no choice she cared to make. My brother was led astray, but I cannot blame him either. He has always been swayed by the nearest opinion, the last word." Her voice was sad, and seemed older than the rest of her. "It's easy to blame Jon Connington - he wanted this, and now he has it, and I don't believe he cares even a little at the cost, though he knows it better than anyone. But he's loyal, at least. I hate to think what might have come about if someone who wasn't so loyal was Hand, what the world might have come to."

"Perhaps. It is certainly comforting, to believe that this is better than some alternative, even when this is so terrible." The Red Woman replied. Her voice was low, and throaty, and tinged with a strange and musical accent from somewhere exotic that the princess would never see. She did not glance at the princess, she stared directly into the sunset unblinking. The Princess watched the gentle lapping of the waves. "It is not such an easy thing, to trust anyone. Perhaps it would have turned out all right – somehow, if your brother had shouldered these burdens himself. Who can know? We all have our tests of character, and we rarely get to learn if we passed them or not."

The princess shook her head, and laughed. Her laughter, like her voice, like her purple eyes, was old before it's time. She was young and sweet, yet there was a bitterness in her. She had grown up forgotten, the least important member of the central family, a tool used by her mother. It had taught her to sniff out sincerity and intrigue. "You do not know? You, who see what is to come in the fires, who resurrects the dead, do not know?"

"I know." The Red Woman replied, in a tone that left no possibility of argument. "But I do not know what. What would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever shown that. Anyone can find out what will happen." She waved her hand, as though commanding attention, though her eyes never left the setting sun. "It is simple. If you write to your brother, and tell him what you suspect, what you think of his actions and behavior, and that he must put aside what he believes and listen to you, and you alone for all others save his family will lead him astray; write that, and send it. And either he will listen, or he will not. What will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”

"It doesn't take magic to know that." She replied, a little petulantly despite herself. For all the Red Woman's stated interest in the Crown Prince, who was born the day his grandfather died beneath a bleeding star, it was Daenerys she spoke to, who she took into confidence. There were times she almost felt that the shadowbinder from Asshai had something in mind for her.

"Connington is blind to the nature of the war we are called upon to fight, child. It is not malice, but simply the limits of his own understanding, and there is little sense in blaming him for what he is not. For all the weight we give to choice, we are captive to our own natures, a metal skeleton which gives shape to our will. As well hate the snake for it's venom, as hate a man for who he is."

"Is it not the nature of people to blame, just as it is the nature of snakes to bite?" Daenerys replied.

The Red Woman persisted, though she shook her head a little, a tic, Daenerys knew, that meant despite herself she was pleased. "People are more than their natures. Or at least, should aspire to be. Though I admit, there times when I despair of people, all who are so jealous, hoarding scraps, determined that not even chaos be outside of our own making. Who would rather be correct then right." There were no ships on the horizon, but for a moment, Daenerys fancied she could see them, a mirage in the dying light. "To be right, you must put the many over the one. Not to believe that you have a destiny. That you have a right. That you have a cause. That you are special. That you are great. It is enough to play a part. Great or small, there is no difference."

Daenerys looked into the sun until she saw spots, then looked at her feet instead. Her eyes were watering after moments. The Red Woman was yet to even blink. "Are you being honest with me?"

At last The Red Woman turned away from the setting sun. Her eyes were as red as her hair. Red as the fading embers of the sunset. "Shall there be truth between us, as two women?" She asked, sounding surprised. "Not as friends, not as teacher and student, but as equals? Well, if truth is what you prefer. Your brother and his son prefer comforting lies. Your grandfather didn't care, I was a weapon to him, a tool to destroy his enemies. An offer to be honest is an offer I have got rarely, Princess Daenerys, particularly from your family. Do you know why? Because only equals speak the truth - that's what a long life has taught me. Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard. Kings and princes lie, distance themselves from what they'd rather not have on their conscience. Your brother has used me as a weapon twice, because he'd rather not have the blood on his hands, and prefer to imagine himself to have nothing to apologize for. Nothing to feel guilty about. But you, Daenerys Stormborn, least child of Aerys Targaryen, would have the truth from me.”

She hesitated a moment. "I would."

"Then ask. And you will know."

She took a deep breath, but she didn't hesitate. "What will happen to my brother?"

"You do not need to know the future to be able to tell that, child, it is enough to have an understanding of the past. Your brother is helpless as a child, among the bleached bones of those who came before him. The desert will swallow him up, the sun shall burn through his illusions as it burns through all shadows, and should anything crawl out then you shall not know it for your brother. Such things are the making of some men, but most simply break. In spite of him, the war will go on - some things, once begun, are not so easily put away. There will be murder, there will be rape, there will be unspeakable practices, and all of them will be for the good, the bloody good, the bloody myth, for destiny, for the sake of the future, for House Targaryen. And none of it will come to anything.” She smiled, gently, but her eyes were hard. "None of it ever does."

It was what she had expected, more or less, though it didn't make hearing it any less painful. She swallowed, and forced herself to meet the Red Woman's eyes. Nobody alive had eyes like that. Just the carved white faces of the weirwood gods, white masks over red depths. "And my nephew? Prince Aegon?"

"Each man's fate is his own to bear. Your nephew, I fear, will break under the strain. But what is, is."

 

**STANNIS**

Ser Meryn Trant was not watching the bridge being built. He was looking at a body swinging from a silver birch. It had been stripped and a sack had been put over its head. Something moved inside the sack. He stared for a moment, fascinated despite himself by by the slick, almost sinewy movement of the thing in there with the man. They had put vermin in the sack. What was it, a ferret? A rat? Either would have eaten half of the man's face before he died - he hadn't ordered them to do that.

Though after due consideration he approved, he decided. It made a better example, this way - and while fear was a poor substitute for courage, he would settle for it.

He leaned forward in the saddle, the better to glare across the water where carpenters were finishing their work. Overseen by a couple of sergeants who knew their way around peg joints, they had set to it with a will. They had prepared the timbers themselves, work that had taken time, and a last load of wood had been wheeled out on to the rickety line of planking, wide enough for only one horse or two men at a time. It was difficult and dangerous work, and all the while, the clouds gathered, promising rain.

Everyone could feel the rising excitement, the strain building in the air. Meryn Trant's attention was on his men hammering and thumping pegs into holes to hold the planks, then iron crucifixion nails to secure them to the bridge piles. It was crude work, but it did not have to last a generation, or even a week. Just an hour or two. The river was already running fast and deep, if they rushed their work and the bridge broke, it would mean the lives of whoever fell in. Yet patience was difficult - many of the knights were approaching the point of risking their horses in the flood to get across.

"Ser!" One of his own men - he didn't recognize him, but then he couldn't be expected to know every mercenary, cut-throat, freelance hedge-knight and beggar with a sword who happened to wear his livery called, spear resting on his shoulder. He was leading a man with him, who looked witless. Ser Meryn Trant's lips curled, as he realized the man was simply exhausted. He was bloodied and bruised, and even from a distance he could see the dark circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes. He didn't recognize that man either, but he knew the red wyvern on his breast.

"Ambushed," the man in the red wyvern said, and lurched to a halt in front of the mounted knight.

"I know him, ser" his own man said, "I know him. He's Genn, one of Ser Scope's lot. Got to say, Genn," he said, turning back to the exhausted man, "you look awful."

"The rest of us look a sight worse," Genn said simply, and a shudder ran through him. "All being dead. I have to talk to Lord Stannis. He needs to hear this. Saving your pardon, ser."He added at last, finally remembering the title. It mollified the knight somewhat, but only somewhat. There was something in the tone of his voice that Ser Meryn Trant didn't like, although he couldn't quite decide what it was. Not that it mattered. Considering what this battered survivor had been through, his tone of voice was hardly a big deal.

"I'll be the judge of that." He replied haughtily. "Tell me what occurred."

"No," Genn said, shaking his head emphatically, "it won't wait. Take me to him."

Ser Meryn Trant's lips curled, and his eyes widened alarmingly. "When your better asks you a question, you answer! I don't know where you lost your manners, but I aught to have you beaten with a knout until you find them again! Or maybe find you a branch to join him!" He gestured at the hanged man, and Genn blinked, suddenly looking very pale. His own man, Ser Meryn noticed with satisfaction, looked a little uncomfortable with this, but gripped his spear in case the order was passed.

"You'll do as you will, ser, but take me to Stannis first," Genn insisted. "He needs to hear this."

Ser Meryn Trant's expression turned thunderous, and he curled a fist, then he let out a breath. He hesitated only againt the possibility that the man did have something important to say. He was certainly acting that way, and he supposed he could let the man make the report before he taught him some manners. "Very well, we'll do this your way. Better Lord Stannis hear your report before I teach you some manners." His eye gleamed with the malicious light of a rat.

"Come on, Genn." Ser Meryn Trant's man said. He frowned as he saw how glazed the man's eyes were. "Sure you don't want a drink first?"

"This can't wait."

"I can believe it." Ser Meryn Trant's man said. The knight considered asking him for his name, but the conversation had extended too long for that to seem appropriate, so he left it a mystery. "Who was it who got you?" the sentry asked, as he led Viktor towards their commander's tent.

"Wolves." The Genn said, and at the mention of the word he shuddered again, and his teeth started chattering. "Men who were wolves."

"It's all right," the soldier told him, and grabbed his shoulder. "You're safe now."

Genn turned to look at him with a blank stare. If Ser Trant hadn't liked the way that Genn spoke, he liked that blank stare even less. His man must have felt the same way, because he removed his hand from his shoulder and turned his attention back to the way ahead.

Stannis's tent was a massive circle of thick canvas and timber frame. A stockade had been built around it, and a pair of men stood at the entrance, as still and silent as the wooden stakes of the fence. They were in black and gold, but there was nothing ceremonial about their gear, it looked well broken in, as did the polearms - halberds - that they carried. They lowered their weapons, then saw Ser Meryn and raised them a little. But only a little.

"We want to see the boss," Ser Meryn's man told them. "It's urgent."

"No disturbances," one of the men rumbled, not deigning to look down.

"One of our patrols has been ambushed. The survivor wants to make a report." Ser Meryn told them, eye flashing.

"Well then, tell him to get started" one of the sentries suggested. The other snickered.

"Only to Stannis," Genn said, his voice barely audible. "It's about the disposition of the enemy, and their forces. I know what they have planned."

The two sentries exchanged a single glance. Then one of them bellowed, so suddenly that Genn jumped.

"Stannis," he called, his voice like a bull, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the camp.

A moment later, Stannis' much put upon clerk, Chubbs, emerged from the relative safety of the depths of the tent, as reluctantly as a mole emerging from its burrow.

"Yes?" he asked, glancing nervously about, and preparing to run. "are we under attack?"

"This man claims Stannis needs to hear something." The one who had alerted him rumbled with perfect disinterest.

"Genn. Archer, in the service of Ser Scope. Though mostly his master archer Willard. Dead now." Genn said, and snapped off a salute. The clerk, obviously taken with the novelty of being saluted, straightened his back.

"Ah yes. What did you want to report?"

"For Stannis' ears only," Genn told him.

"Well, this is most irregular." The clerk told him, but Genn remained resolute. "Oh, alright then. Lord Stannis is busy with his maps. You should come in as well, Ser Meryn. He'll want an update about the state of the bridge. Come on. You can wait here," he told the Ser Meryn's man as he made to follow Genn in.

"Well, hope it goes well, Genn." he said quietly to himself as his colleague entered the tent. Ser Meryn handed him his reigns and followed him in. Genn, however, wasn't paying any attention to them As he ducked through the canvas curtain into the oil-lit expanse of Lord Stannis' quarters, he was already calculating, evaluating, searching.

There was no furniture save the palate of straw in the corner, and the scrum of men who stood tightly around the cartographer's table in the centre. A few sat on stools, but most did not. A large oil lamp hung above them, illuminating the freshly-inked canvas of the map, and gleaming on the brass angles of the cartographer's compasses that rested on a side table. As the clerk cleared his throat nervously, the assembled commanders, obviously interrupted in the middle of their conference, turned to face him. In the midst of them all, his expression as hard and stern as always, stood Stannis Baratheon, the king of Westeros' cousin.

"Why have we been interrupted?" he asked the clerk.

"This man escaped from an ambush," the clerk squeaked, and pushed Genn forward as though he were a human shield.

"So they do know we're here? Here exactly? Damn!"

Stannis' scowl deepened perceptibly, and pushed past his inferiors towards the battered archer. He wore his usual dark clothing, a heavy cloak around his shoulders and broadcloth tunic - he might have been a clerk in a counting house, were it not for the deference those assembled paid him. The knights and lords and captains who surrounded him, each one decked out in the very height of colourful martial fashion, made him look like a crow amongst a flock of peacocks. It was the custom among soldiers to wear as much of their wealth on their bodies as possible.

"Where were you attacked?" he demanded, seizing Genn by the arm and dragging him over to the table. "Where exactly? They must have found out about our presence. Whoever was responsible for that will roll for that, I can assure you."

The commanders who surrounded him looked suddenly uneasy. Stannis' was a man who believed in enforcing through punishment, and he had a real flair for the creative when it came to making an example.

"Difficult to say," Genn said, as he followed Stannis Baratheon to stand over the map table. The canvas that lay upon it had obviously been freshly made. The colors all stood out cleanly against the cream of the parchment, and the material was unblemished by age or staining.

One blunt, dirty finger traced the line of the river, as he closed his eyes. "It was over there," Genn said with all the conviction in the world, pointing at the opposite end of the table, and, as everybody turned to look, he snatched up one of the cartographer's compasses and hurled himself at Stannis Baratheon with a garbled yell.

The speed and ferocity of his attack would have been the end of most men, but not Stannis. He was no legendary swordsman to inspire romances and ballads, but he dutifully sparred with the master-at-arms and knights in his service, and had done so since he was a child. He reacted with the whiplash reflexes of a cornered rat, twisting out of the way as the brass point of the compass punched through the air where his stomach had been. Genn twisted and struck again, aiming for the soft spot just below his commander's ribs.

Stannis leapt back, and one of the men, the captain of the Stormcrows whose wits were somewhat the worse for wine and had barely realized what was going on, took the full force of the blow, and the brass spike of the compass punctured his skin, muscle and entrails. Captain Prendahl na Ghezn, a warrior and mercenary of Ghiscari origin screamed, more with surprise than pain. Then he screamed again, as Genn pulled his makeshift weapon out of the sucking wound and shoved past his victim. Another man got in the way, Ser Patrek Selmy, but without pausing, the Genn’s leg shot out and he rolled the knight, swept his legs and dropped him on his face, with his right arm already dislocated behind his back. The mercenary gave a tortured scream, and Genn kicked him with precision.

The room was in uproar. The assembled captains began shouting and fumbling for their blades, but both the assassin and his target ignored them. There was a sound exactly like a wounded lion - although nobody gathered had ever heard that, exactly, the only lions they'd seen were on coats of arms, as Ser Brus Buckler got to his feet, unsheathed his dirk and moved towards the assassin. Stannis, however, was unarmed, and with an impressive turn of speed he had already jinked around the table. But Genn was hot on his heels. He dodged one sword stroke, and dashed another one away with the compass. A third caught him on his back, unzipping the muscles beneath his shoulders in a spray of blood. But if he felt a thing, you wouldn't have know it. Not even the warmth that trickled down his back. All he cared about was his quarry, and, to his frustration, he saw that his target had gotten a dozen men between them. Genn had been a soldier for man years, but now he acted with an instinct that betrayed every principle he had ever been taught. He tested the weight of the brass compass, drew back his arm, and threw it towards the broad target of his Lord Stannis Baratheon.

The makeshift weapon whirred as it spun through the air, the brass of its construction glittering like some hellish wasp. Then, with a meaty thunk that was the most satisfying thing Genn had ever heard, it buried itself in the meat of Stannis's shoulder.

Stannis screamed, and staggered, and the brief offering their lords injury afforded as the men were distracted Genn, if it was Genn, let out a feral snarl more animal than human, and leapt forward, fingers outstretched in an attempt to grab Stannis' throat.

But it was hopeless. He no longer had the element of surprise, and Ser Buckler was between the two men now. He got between the assasains wild charge before anyone else could and, striking with the neat efficiency of a butcher quartering a cow, he hacked the big dirk's blade up. The force of the blow combined with the momentum of his assailant's charge and the assassins sternum was shattered in two, chips of bone driven back to puncture his heart.

The assassin dropped. Ser Buckler retrieved his dagger, and cleaned it fastidiously, before returning it to it's place. There was nobody in the room who had known Genn, but none of them would have recognized him. He didn't look anything like the Ser Scope's archer. He was a small man, dark and wrinkled, he could of been from anywhere. Been anyone. Nobody said anything, but nobody had taken much of a look at him before. But even wounded and on fire with adrenaline, Stannis noticed.

He looked at the ring of horrified faces around him, and sighed.

"Well, it seems sensible to assume the worst, I suppose," he wheezed, and with a lurch of nausea realised that he could still feel the weight of a weapon hanging from the numbness of his shoulder. He reached up, and pulled the compass free. The bloodstained brass glittered in the light as he walked purposefully back to the table. Prendahl na Ghezn groaned, and a few men dragged him away. He'd live if they could help it, but he was of no use to Stannis at the moment. One of the other men would have to take over.

"Well, we obviously need to bring our plans forward. No matter. We will cross as soon as possible. All men will be mounted. And we will move to support Lord Tygett. You see how we can approach the field without giving away our numbers, perhaps without being spotted at all?"

Stannis indicated a hollow on the map with the tip of the compass. A drop of his blood dripped onto the map, landing on the peak that marked the hill that was being fought over, and where Tygett had was being sorely pressed.

It was, all concerned were later to agree, a good omen.

**LANCEL**

The thing about the name Lannister, was that you usually knew everything that Ser Tygett knew, even if you weren't polishing his armor and looking after his horses. So Lancel was well aware just what was coming for them. He could just make out, against the dim fells on the far side of the valley, a black wave of men and horses, sharpened metal glimmering. He found himself thinking about his betrothed, ridiculously, a woman he'd only met briefly, who his idea of was informed by the opinions of other people. Yet he would have sworn he could see her face, so sharp it caught his breath. He wondered if he’d ever see that face, if that was even how she looked, or he was imagining her.

She was three or four years old, and full of words. She had bright gold hair. She was playing in the garden outside the study of his fathers cottage - and she had a rag doll. Tyrek played with her, while her nurse had worried he was making her too excited. But Lancel hadn't. He'd been seven, and thought too highly of himself. Even when his father had joined in. Most of the time his father was solemn, pious and very self-disciplined, but around small children he became playful and she had squealed as he teased her. He wished he had, though he supposed it didn't matter. She probably didn't remember - he hadn't, up until now. Then the soft thoughts were crushed under the exhilaration, as he moved to his place.

The army fell to place. There was little order in the array. There had been arguments about who should be on the right or left, but Tygett had settled those arguments, one way or another.

Lord Tygett sat, perfectly composed, his long and worn face as close to serene as it could be, his scarlet cloak and boots spotless. He looked a great warrior, which he was, though he claimed he was getting too old for fighting. His greying beard jutted over his breastplate, which Tion had polished until it shone. “You said Harpoint. This ain’t Hardpoint.” Ser Brax didn’t moderate his tone. “This is a fucking noose, my lord, and you have put our heads all the fucking way in.”

"You're as dramatic as a woman. Try and remember how to suffer in silence." Tygett replied, frowning at him. Tygett had had no sleep for two nights and his eyes were red-rimmed and angry, although his tone remained mild. “As far as I can see, right now everything depends on us - since we still have seen no sign of Stannis.”

“War,” Lord Tygett went on, “can be an odd thing. It's mostly maneuvers, but a battle is a situation where two commanders each imagine they are possessed of a decisive superiority - and one turns out to be wrong.” He was still watching his own men. “I keep putting myself in the place of the captain. Why’s he even here? He's not trying to shift us, and he's not trying to draw us out, he's just waiting. And so he waits, and then suddenly throws everything. Why not just go home and declare victory.” He frowned. “I’m missing something.”

"Might be he wants to fight. Feels like he has to make the effort."

Tygett looked at Ser Foote as if he had something hideous springing from her forehead. “That’s amateur talk. This is strictly business.”

“Lords and generals can't afford that. No room for hate. Strictly business. War is about mess kettles and latrines and having the last set of warm, dry fighters in reserve.” Tygett nodded. “Well, maybe he hates us. That would be nice.”

"Nothing else makes any sense. Why today? That's what I'd like to know."

"Every day is ordinary," Father Raynard said, "until it isn’t." He smiled happily, as though he had just said something he thought they would find significant, then looked disappointed when nobody said nothing. "Every day," he started again.

"Well, they've set off." Ser Foote said, and wiped a sweaty hand on his hip. "My lord, they've set off, and they're heading for us." From a distance, drums thundered dully. Trumpets and horns wailed. The ground, struck by thousands of feet, by hundreds of hooves, shuddered.


End file.
